This is a pretty simple game, but if it ain't fun! I enjoyed this a lot and would love to see this be fleshed out even more!
Spirit Lamp
Creator of
Recent community posts
I'm pretty sure everyone knows that a game jam can't stop capitalism on it's own; change does not happen simultaneously, but once enough people get the ball rolling, it starts picking up speed. Imagine telling a suffering family who has to work for their entire life harvesting resources for big companies to "grow up you man babies." By going against people who want to make art showing the fucked up world we live in like this, you are effectively supporting a toxic hierarchy that favors luck and heartless progression more than empathy for others and making the world a better place.
Also try to cut back on the meaningless swearing and bad punctuation because it makes you look stupid, which would explain the username but still...
I'm glad to see Atia pop up again ever since "You and Me". The washitape artstyle is looking good as ever, in fact it actually looks a bit more refined and shiny than the first one. I like how we've gotten more and more world building and character from Atia in this one, there was some backstory in the first part, however this one seems to focus more on Atia's point of view in her own life and the world outside of the temple.
I also know that this was made for a visual novel jam, but this sequel (for lack of a better word) about Atia has really benefited from the visual novel formula. To be honest, the RPG topdown style in the first game didn't create much depth other than some simple fleshing out of the temple and a few unlocking of doors.
This time around it feels much more refined, and it makes it easy to know that this is a story-based series, not a gameplay focused one.
Super happy to see Atia in one of your pieces again!
This game is simply sweet and super good! I loved the art style a lot, especially Atia's character panels that had some old text from paper in her hair, really great! The story is also really nice, it's short and sweet. I actually wish I didn't read the short description before this saying this was a love story because if I didn't know it before hand it would have been a really nice surprise that would feel just that better when seeing the end. Considering that the many pieces of text are told from the point of view of the Goddess, I would've felt more in the shoes of her wondering what the player character was doing. That's on me tho!
This game in general is super inspiring for me and my own work. I'm really glad I stumbled into this because what you've made here is a really nice experience.
Could I add minigames between visual novel sections as to add challenge and action? For example, a "no internet" style run section where you jump over obstacles.
Edit: Just to clarify, the minigames I'm thinking of wouldn't be much, you wouldn't need to put a lot of thought or effort into them to finish the minigames, they're just a way to add tension and stuff that text can't really get across.
This was pretty cool! I'm assuming this was based off of Florence, the interactive wordless storytelling alongside the little minigames that you do, and of course the love story that you get connected to.
I was admittedly not expecting to get connected to the story in the game, but yeah. Super nice! I was really wanting to see what happened next for the two when playing.
The artstyle was nice, very cozy. The music sellection went along nicely to that cozy feeling, although the audio polish itself was admittedly rough at times, but that's not a big problem considering this was a jam game.
Good love story, cool little interactive experience, 10/10
This game is really cool! I boot this up from time to time because the gameplay loop is super solid. I would love to see this fleshed out some more with cool mechanics, because this game would thrive if there was more meat on its bones.
One thing I would also like to see (which would probably never happen) is a full MMO racing game where everyone's in the same linear track like this trying to get as far as possible, and that's it. The way the obstacles are placed in this game are random and actually really cool, and it reminded my of how cool it would be to see a bunch of random ships controlled by other players racing through it trying to get as far as possible.
Anyways, fun game!
Really cool game! I love the fact that you have simultaneously created an interesting difficulty curve, an interesting set of decisions to make, and a unifying mechanic all in one, that one is the hearts as timer, ammo, and health. Because the game has you starting off with plenty of health and ammo, it's easy at the beginning, and difficult over time, unlike other roguelikes that have it as a set line of passage. The art is really good. Everything was juicy.
Amazing game!
I see what you mean and (with this elaboration) agree.
I made a mistake for that specific quoted piece of my comment, I was meaning to say it was a political agenda that this Jam appeared to have. Now that you have explained that this is a piece of commentary you want to say in the Jam, the rule being put in place makes sense, it's just (without that context) feels slapped on.
For the specification of the tabletop submissions, I can see why now. I'm mostly a video game developer and I would expect that people would be able to differentiate a tabletop jam from a videogame jam, but of course it's convenient to lay it out like that.
Either way, thanks for your reply, sorry for making it look like I'm just shitting on something for no reason, I think this jam is really cool.
I just want to get out of the way that I completely agree with all of the rules, but I feel that many are plain unnecessary (unless the past game jam caused the rules to be implemented), and I'd suggest leaving them off, not because they're bad rules, but because they're obvious.
Firstly, "Table top RPGs only," of course this is only for tabletop games, if you talk about D&D, of course it's tabletop.
Secondly, "No Nazis, terfs, bigots, etc." I understand what you're going for when saying this, but like, come on man. This is extremely unnecessary and it feels very forced. I remember on a different online community of game designers coming across a tabletop sci-fi RPG, and in the instruction guide it said, "This game is meant for a specific audience only, if you are a Nazi, homophobic, transphobic, racist, or any form of bigotry, get a therapist and fix your mess of a life." No joke. I understand that feeling of wanting to share your frustration with politics at the moment, but I really suggest removing that because it makes you look like you have a specific agenda in mind when running the jam, it doesn't matter if it's a socially accepted view (for clarity I agree with your statement), putting that kind of thing makes it seem like you are not here to run a genuine fun event, and that really sucks because I can see that this Jam is created out of passion.
If I were you, I would change the rule to, "Any form of indecency or harmful political intent is prohibited," or just flat out remove the rule because it's really not a necessary rule to have, it's obvious when something has a harmful political agenda, and you don't need a rule to stop those people, those people would be breaking the guidelines set up by Itch.io (look at community guidelines - rule 1 and 2).
This is a really cool idea that is super smart!
I love the negative feedback loop that comes with winning a new piece of the burger, it gives the other player a better chance at catching up. And because your burger get’s taller (or longer? IDK), it means that in the later parts of the game when both sides have gotten many pieces, the burger actually makes it harder to hit it back to the other side, better solidifying who wins the game. Perfect party game design!
I could see this being turned into a four player game, one were people could play horizontally.
The initial controls (even with no burger pieces) is very slippery and sometimes uncontrollable, but other than that, really smart and fun!
Super unique take among the other pong games made! I really like it’s concept.
I will admit that the execution of the idea could be improved.
One of those things was how slow your player went, not only did it mean that there wouldn’t be a great window to hit the ball back at the enemies, but it also meant that if you miss the ball, you would have to wait for the ball to come back to you automatically. I can see why it was like that, to makes sure that there’s a punishment for not hitting the ball, but it also meant that it was super easy to be punished.
Another thing was the hitting of the ball itself, it felt like whenever I actually got the ball close enough for me to hit it, it would pass by me half of the time.
I also thought the enemies could’ve been better, or at least more varied. What if there were enemies that could hit the ball back at you and (if you don’t hit the ball back) could hurt you? What about enemies that have more health but when you kill them give you a cool power up or something. Stuff like that.
Overall, I can see this being a very cool game with a bit more stuff in it!
Super cool game! I’m a fan of the fact that after the ball goes through a paddle portal, it doesn’t just go out the other paddle but instead it goes out a separate set of portals that you need to keep your eye on.
I’ve seen portal mixed with pong before, but not quite like this, the design (especially for portal frenzy) forces you to actually strategize where the ball will go to next.
The paddles are a bit slow to my liking, but I understand why they are, they’re to help make sure you think and strategize your position rather than just being able to zip instantly.
Over all this is just super solid, most other pong mixed with portal games I’ve seen use it as a one-dimensional mechanic as a way of showing “look guys the paddles are now portals.” But you clearly wanted to make a fun game with some value rather than a throwaway joke.
Hey! Thanks for playing, I’m glad to know the pacing is good and not challenging to the point of causing rage.
The ball-paddle mechanic is admittedly different from traditional pong games and -also admittedly- poorly implemented. There is a way to change the ball’s direction with your paddle with something I called “Spiking.” Spiking is when you move your paddle while the ball collides with you, and the ball moves in the direction you’re going regardless of it’s original trajectory. The mechanic wasn’t taught to the player, and (because it’s not how the ball usually works in pong) people didn’t know beforehand. The mechanic doesn’t have any “coyote time” style quality of life improvements.
The enemy variety also is due to this lack of telegraphing of their mechanics. I’ll explain them now because why not:
- The enemies with a circle on them are the run-of-the-mill pong opponent, they follow the ball, but don’t do anything to really catch you off guard.
- The enemies with a triangular looking design are like the circle enemies, however they can spike the ball in a different direction.
- The enemies with a square (the enemy that people remembered the most) follows the player, and sometimes move away from the player to make them more of a challenge.
One thing I’d love to do with the square enemies is make it so that the ball can bounce in both directions depending on if it was in front or behind the enemy, because that would make the square enemies that much more interesting, making them not only an opponent, but also a tool.
The sound in the game (or extreme lack there of) is the part I’m the least proud of for this game, because there was originally going to be sounds, but because of many domino effect-like mistakes, I couldn’t have them in the game, even though they could’ve made the game that much more juicy, (there was even going to be a roar sound for the boss).
I’m actually working on an update to the game that smoothens some of the rough edges that coincidentally cover many of the critiques you had about the game. And thankfully, you actually gave me an interesting perspective on ways to help fix these problems, which I’ll be using for the update. For instance, the undercooked spiking mechanic was one thing I wanted to fix up for the update. But then, after you brought up the more traditional way that the ball could be controlled when hitting it, I’m testing out a build that has that mechanic on top of the spiking mechanic. And hopefully if it feels good enough to use, I’ll probably keep both mechanic in the final update. I’m also of course going to do other stuff like adding sounds, music, a proper tutorial, and some juice such as that wall breaking “animation.”
And again, thanks for playing. :)
That slice animation is so juicy, holy hell this is good. Super short of course, but wow is it good.
There is tons of stuff you could do with this concept, moving enemies, boss battles where the weak points help you reach other platforms, or maybe even enemies that give you a one time powerup, like a double-jump.
Easy to learn. Fun to play. Not really hard to master (but that's because the game is short and not fleshed out).
I totally see this going in an awesome direction.
My thoughts on this game are a blend of mixed and positive. I'll just say out of the box that I am probably not the right audience for this game, apparently it's a fan game for something I don't know anything about.
With that said, I enjoyed this quite a lot! It doesn't really to too much different from Everhood, but that's clearly the point, it's a sort of reskin with a totally different aesthetic, which seems to be the thing this game is trying to do. The aesthetic of this game is the best part of this game, the mixed fonts and scrappy yet clean nature of the interface and artwork is super appealing and I liked seeing all of the new things this game was showing.
The gameplay is good. However, there's a problem that I think even Everhood faces, which is that I don't feel like I'm going with the beat at times. This is a rhythm game, yet I don't feel like what I'm doing is alongside a beat. There's an obvious explanation for this, which is the design of it, it's guitar hero but you're trying to avoid the notes that fly at you. The game is built around avoiding things and while this can work, it means that people will play efficiently rather than playing alongside the beat, because avoiding things requires options (which this game has at times) and those options ask which would be the most efficient way to execute. Either way, I still had fun avoiding things, even if I didn't enjoy the fact that the rhythm element wasn't present.
The music was good, I know that the music was made by someone else (that I think is a part of the fandom this game is in). I'm not a huge fan of rap, but those parts where the melody kicks in are enough for me to enjoy it. There's not much else to talk about it though.
Sorry for the long winded review on this lol, thanks for your time.
The demo is pretty good! I'll admit that it's not perfect, but I liked it.
The controls feel okay, although there were some places that made me have to use all of the jump to reach which felt weird.
But the one thing that this demo shines at are the puzzles, funnily enough.
I know this will sound biased (and I guess it kinda' is) but this is no joke the first time in a puzzle game where I feel rewarded for beating a puzzle.
Most puzzle games I play usually make me feel like I finally can get the hell along when I finish a puzzle, because of how abstract the puzzle laws are.
But this game is pretty genius! Because it's based off of physics and magnets, I can understand that, I can understand how these objects work instantly, it's just about figuring out how they work together, and it made me feel super rewarded for beating it.
I got all 7 keys and I feel like Einstein.
Maybe just make some of the places where you jump slightly lower, because as a game developer, I wouldn't worry, but as a gamer, I think I would get irritated.
Cool experience!
the... the blood... oh god.................................
GREAT GAME!
I liked this a lot, I always like looking at the different aesthetics that Tetris games go for to try and stand out, and I must admit, this one was just great!
That morbid blood splatter juxtaposed to the cute art style makes the game much more memorable, and I'll definitely be loading this up from time to time whenever I just want to play some tetris with bloody cats :)