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Very fun game! Fast and frantic. Game feels really good and satisfying. Some minor feedback (I know it's a jam game, feel free to ignore).

-When I first started playing (before I got used to the timing) I would often shoot the upgrades by accident before I knew what they were, since I just kept shooting as the level ended.

-Enemies warping in right on top of you can be frustrating, especially the ones that shoot bullets on death.

-Generally when a lot of stuff is warping in visibility is poor. Also, player's bullets stand out more than the enemy ones, and it can be hard to quickly orient yourself after dying when a lot of stuff is on the field.

-I appreciate the minimalism, but it would be nice if more information was on-screen. I often forget how many lives I have and can only see it when hovering over the upgrade. And with any upgrade that affects stats it would be nice to display the current value and how it will change.

-This is really minor, but it's not clear to me how the waves scale up and how that interacts with the # enemies and # enemies required to clear upgrades.

the graphics & style are really nice.Is the camera supposed to swing wildly around when I move my mouse only a few pixels? It's a little bit dizzying and difficult to control.

I was also a bit confused by the start of the game because it wouldn't let me leave down the paths, except there was *one* path that I was allowed to go on where the food was located. It wasn't obvious to me that I was allowed to go down that path and not the others, so I assumed the food had to be somewhere in the tiny starting clearing.

I didn't make it past the mosquitos because the camera was too disorienting; I'll try to hook up a gamepad and come back to it

looks like there might be a bug in my high score list! those are not quite in order ;)

Congrats on the release!! The game looks amazing <3

Wow, that art is amazing! Thank you for sharing

Finally got it!

Okay yeah the map is more expansive than I realized. I was favouring the lower path before because tucking yourself behind the buildings while moving upwards is a bit awkward.

This game is so cool. Really nice atmosphere with the film grain (or I guess digital sensor noise?). I think I'm either missing some piece of strategy or haven't found the best path because I've made it within sight of the border many times but haven't been able to clear that last sprint. Your other comment about looking closer at the targeting behaviour was really useful to get me this far though. Gonna come back to this one and figure it out, I swear!

The goal is what you make it -- it's more of a sandbox. It's meant to evoke finding eg. an old maybe unreleased Atari game that's missing the manual and it's inscrutable but there must be SOME logic to it... right? maybe not; maybe there's a reason you found it at the landfill

Really nice animations!

I love that you can stand on the score

Sure, feel free!

Awesome, thanks for the update! I played through again and finally managed to get through the game without getting hit, and sustaining my combo the whole time:

I like to aim for 3 options with 1 magnet powerup as that gives me a nice spread, and then collect weapon powerups after that.

I'm not sure -- I think it was still mostly on screen but starting to leave. It might just be that the hit box is a bit smaller than I was expecting

I did notice that yeah! I wasn't sure if it was a shot limit or something else, the fact it's based on height on the screen explains it, as it didn't seem like I was shooting faster just from getting close to enemies.

I played through with the new changes --  the new bullet sprites feel really nice, good work! Definitely feels like more of a power upgrade even though it's just an aesthetic change, very satisfying.

I also like the new coin design, they're a lot easier to distinguish from the enemy bullets.

One thing I noticed is I don't seem to be able to collect the powerups as they're leaving the screen -- sometimes I miss the one I want in the rotation so I wait for it to come around again, but the powerup is too low to collect even though it's still visible.

They are all technically solvable since they're generated by making random moves! Some of them are just absurdly difficult and hard to reason about

It resets every 5 levels -- otherwise the puzzles would get out of control too quickly, or sometimes get stuck in repetitive patterns. I do wish I could have made the transition less jarring & let you see the finished puzzle for a bit before it switches

Very cool game! At first I thought it was infinite until I hit the boss (who died very quickly lol)

My one bit of feedback is that it would be nice if the "weapon" upgrade made the shot visually look stronger instead of just upping the damage. You could do this either by having chunkier/wider bullet sprites, or simply by upping the fire rate instead of damage. Consider increasing bullet speed a bit as you upgrade too -- it's not really much of an advantage but it will look/feel stronger to the player.

Since the game is made in PICO-8 I don't have much control over this -- it only supports 2 buttons. Theoretically they could be swapped, but there's not really room in the cart to add more options to the in-game menu.

If your device runs PICO-8 natively you may be able to change the bindings in a config file (see https://pico-8.fandom.com/wiki/Controllers#Configuring_controllers)

There's also an option in the game's pause menu to change the autofire mode so the main fire button doesn't need to be held down, if that helps.

They are supposed to change each run, but orb colours are consistent for that particular run -- same with cloaks, amulets and staves. Identifying the items is part of the game!

yes, there are triple-bomb and missile power ups!

Thank you!! I have some ideas for maybe doing an expanded paid version in love2d or picotron at some point, but it probably wouldn't be for a while.

Happy it's being used, and very cool game! Thanks for sharing :)

Thank you for checking it out! I just watched your video -- very fun stream and your enthusiasm for the games is infectious :)

Ok went back and played the original, then this one again, and managed to clear it  (46717) now I can unclench my butthole

"a bit harder" he said. I feel like it's way harder now! But it's so good, all of the improvements carried over from infinite are great. 21,434 is my best so far, haven't managed to clear it yet

I don't currently have any plans for an Android app (if pico-8 ever gets native Android support that would make it easier)

For now, the web version does work pretty well on Android. The latest patch improved the controls somewhat by eliminating accidental diagonals on the d-pad and double button presses. If you make the game full screen then it will work in landscape mode as well.

Thanks for the kind words. I've added a note to the github gist releasing the code under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Might not be a typical license for software, but the minified cart is already under that license on the Lexaloffle BBS so I think it makes sense.

Thanks, I would have loved to add sound but since this was made for a jam with 1kb code limit and no pre-made assets, it would have meant cutting features and the sound would have ended up pretty basic anyway. If I ever make a more full-featured version it would definitely have sound. Thanks for checking it out!

I'd be happy to! I'm uhh.. recovering from COVID right now but should be back to 100% soon

Thank you and happy you enjoyed it!

Yes, I am planning an Android release but not sure when it will happen. Hopefully will have news to share soon

Thanks for the kind words! Glad you've enjoyed the game

https://sparsegamedev.itch.io/spring-falls

https://sparsegamedev.itch.io/spring-falls

I will add to this that even though I read that it said to click "resources" to build an exit, I was still confused by the tutorial because I thought "empty cell" meant a grid cell that didn't have anything in it yet (the green ones with white outline), and clicking on those there was no resources option, just "cell". I think the language used could be reworked to be less ambiguous.

Really creative stuff with a lot of subtle touches.

Nice atmosphere! This definitely brings me back to the NES era. I feel like it's a challenge to make video game music that's not annoying, and this could easily sit in the background on a loop without getting on my nerves.

This is some crazy stuff! Really liking the unpredictability of it -- Laces is my favourite.