itch.io

Hi there! Hit me up at kevin@spiritstone.studio and let me know what you're looking to do. Maybe we can set something up!

Greatly enjoyed my time with this one.  Very impressive for 48 hours!  Loved the enemy designs, simple but very effective.  Music and sound design was top notch, presentation-wise.  Excellent work!

Solid little RNG Flappy Bird.  Feels a bit too random.  I know the theme was dice, but the theming felt a bit loose here.

Hi Score: 566M.

Not bad.  The biggest problem I faced was not knowing which color the bottom of my die was.  It would have been easier to keep track of if the button cared what the top of the die was instead of the bottom.

Cute little concept!  Simple but effective.  The "king me" system is a bit too strong though.  Consider making the king still deal with randomness.  Maybe the king gets 2 random options to choose from instead of being stuck with 1.

Impressive concept!  For the amount of time you had available to you, I think you did a great job.  Obviously it's a bit rough, but that's to be expected in something like this.  Excellent work!

Great devlog. I've faced this issue myself in my momentum game, and there's nothing like shared misery among gamedevs. Never considered the open level route, it's a really great solution! Currently I'm looking into the concept of mutators to add a bit more replayability.  You've given me alot to think about for the future though!

Looking for a challenge?  Try beating my time!

Very impressive!  Shortest time I've seen so far, well done! :)

Actually, I released a 1-month dev time version of it right here! https://spiritstone.itch.io/escape-hero

Thank you so much for this amazing tool.  With it, I was able to make the levels for my game Escape Hero VERY easily.  I cannot overstate how helpful this tool was in my gamedev pipeline, well done!

Thanks for the high praise and feedback!

1. Good point!  That'd be pretty easy to toy with.  I'll see what I can do on this.
2. This was sort of an experiment I was trying to get players to use the sword "bounce" to jump up to the platform above by hitting the snake on the pillar.  I'll have to test things out a bit more in the future to see if I want to keep going for precision platforming, or not.  It seems with the game's current speed that may not be a wise direction.
3. In the future I'd like to add in a more proper "death" screen that shows what hit the player and everything very clearly.  I was a bit pressed for time, so I decided to just ignore that aspect for now.  That said, I maaaay end up making the player's hitbox a bit smaller to make it a bit more forgiving.
4. This was totally on my to-do list, and I absolutely agree!  I'll see about getting that in for the next iteration. :)

Great controls!  I wish the gameplay worked a bit more like the original Combat however, and it didn't reset each time.  I feel the resetting slows the gameplay down heavily, making it feel less action oriented.  Having an AI vs AI mode was hilarious to watch.  Solid entry here.

This game does an exemplary job of having a "modern retro" feel.  The music and graphics our outstanding.  Having said that, the gameplay itself is a bit lackluster.  The controls feel too tight for their own good, I almost wish I could control my movements with my mouse to allow for a more "analog" feel (like Atari paddles).  I'd love to see an edition of this where you move with the mouse and fire by clicking.  Perhaps you could award a bonus multiplier for hitting things without missing a shot.  Very solid start you have here, well done!

In my mind, this is now the definitive "I want to try E.T., but I want to know what's actually going on" game.  An extremely faithful recreation that does a much better job explaining its rules than the original did.  In that regard it's deserving of kudos.  Well done.

An excellent update on the source material.  I loved the "choose your own death" system that came with the upgrades working both for you and your enemies.  Very well put together and enjoyable game!

A very straight forward and faithful remake.  Follows the source material very carefully, for better or worse.  Nice work!

The final night of the #highjam SUPER STREAM is live now! http://twitch.tv/highsight  Come join us as we play through every single game in this two night event!

Now this right here is a modern day Yars' Revenge.  This is a high level recreation that goes above and beyond in every regard.  It has a couple of issues with "unexpected" attacks that hit you without warning, and due to the mouse controls, your ability to move around can be affected by the resolution you're playing at.  ignoring those minor gripes however, this is an extraordinarily fun and well made entry.  Give yourselves a pat on the back, you should be quite proud!

An extremely faithful recreation of the original Adventure's "Quest 1".  This has a great combination of old vs new going on with it, I love your take on the camera controls, and everything just handles perfectly.  Would have really liked to have seen the other two Quests in this style, and maybe some custom ones.  Perhaps a level editor if you'd be so inclined!  Wonderful recreation, thanks for entering.

Gameplay's pretty simple, but still very enjoyable at the same time.  The Audio is the real winner here, with the exception of when the player is turning.  I really like how you tried to make this game as similar to the original as you could given the timelimit, right down to the red posts.  Excellent job!

Outstanding work on the look and feel of this game.  It falls a bit short on the handling side however.  The tanks feel a bit too much like they're slipping around instead of grabbing the ground.  Due to the nature of the game, it's in a weird spot right now where it's not a "fast action" game, but it's also not a "slow strategic shots" game.  For some ideas that could fix this, consider letting the player fire with the mouse, having the turret head aim where the mouse is, independent of the direction they are traveling.  Also try to give the tanks more of a "momentum" behind their movements.

This is a great framework, at this point it just needs a few tweaks.  Excellent entry!

A very well made recreation in its own right.  My biggest gripe (as you know) is with the controls.  I'd love to try a mouse version and see how far I can get.  The "two paddles" with the hole in the middle is just diabolical, and I love it.  It really screws with everything you know about standard breakout.  Sadly due to the game's high difficulty, I never got past level 2, so I couldn't see much further.  Nice entry!

Excellent use of aesthetic overall in this game.  The sprites themselves may be quite simple, but the way in which you use those graphics is what really wins out here.  The presentation is top notch, polished to a mirror sheen!  The projectiles feel a bit too slow moving for the much higher resolution we are dealing with in modern hardware.  It's a very faithful recreation, I only wish you pushed the gameplay concept a bit more.  Even still, this is an excellent jam piece!

An outstanding accomplishment.  The difficulty is a bit high, but it does a great job easing the player into its mechanics.  Really loved the "OH MY GOD" when the truth of the world is revealed.  The controls were a bit janky for me at times, I felt it dropping key inputs on occasion, which is a big no-no for a game that demands such precision. This demands to be expanded on and made into a full fledged game!

WOW! I am absolutely blown away by the number of entries in the first ever highjam!  I hope you all had fun making these games, but now comes the fun part for me.  Starting February 12th at 8PM ET, I will be playing each and every single submitted game LIVE on my Twitch channel.  This will be a two part streaming event featuring half the games one night, and half the games the next night.  So to clarify, here are the stream times:

Part 1: February 12th at 8PM ET
Part 2: February 13th at 8PM ET

In addition to streaming them, I plan on giving each game a rating, and I suggest you all do the same! The most important part of any good jam is that every takes a moment to rate their peer's work, it's all a part of the learning process! I have not yet determined the order in which I will tackle the games, but I plan on mixing them up a bit.  It will not be first submitted first played.  I can't wait to dig into each of your games, it's gonna be a real pleasure to check these all out.  Excellent work everyone, and thank you so much for submitting to the jam.  See you all on stream!
-Highsight

Heyo!  great question.

1) Tricky to answer.  Depending on the amount of submissions, I want to make this either a 1 or 2 day streaming event.  If I get more than 20, the streaming will be broken up into two days on the 12th and 13th (Monday and Tuesday), each starting at 8PM ET.  If I get less than 20 submissions, I will be streaming only on the 13th (Tuesday), again, starting at 8PM ET.  I recommend you keep an eye on my Twitter for more information as it develops, and you can of course watch the Discord and my Twitch itself!

2) The stream will be archived and kept forever!  If you can't make it, don't worry, you'll have future chances to watch it.  The stream will be viewable in my Twitch Videos section.  The stream should be visible there nearly immediately after it's completed.

Looking forward to trying everything out! :D

Provided you have the rights to the assets, you are allowed to use them.

Extremely Terrific!

AND WE'RE OFF!

Starting now, you may all begin work on your #HighJam submissions.  You have until Monday, February 12th at Midnight (Eastern Time) until we are no longer accepting submissions.  If you're going to post anything about your project on social media, I ask that you please use #highjam to help get the word out.  Every little bit helps!  If you have any questions, feel free to post something in the forums here, or for a faster response hit me up on Twitter or my Discord.

Best of luck to all of you on your submissions, I can't wait to play all of your games!
-Highsight

#highjam is the preferred hashtag.  SO EXCITED!

Hey everyone,

I'd like to start off by saying how ecstatic I am to see so many people joining this game jam, I can't wait to check out all of your games and see what creative ideas you've come up with!  If you didn't know already, I have a Discord, and I've set up a special channel where people can discuss the highjam among other things.  It's highly populated with other devs already, and we'd love to chat with you.

Now, to brass tax.  Although I personally abhor censorship in gaming, I'm afraid that Twitch has a few strict rules when it comes to this sort of thing, and if I want to show off all of your games, I'm afraid I'm going to need to update one of my rules to be on the safe side.  Originally I had a rule that said "NUDITY IS NOT ALLOWED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!".  Well, I'm going to have to update that slightly to now say "NUDITY AND SEXUALLY EXPLICIT CONTENT IS NOT ALLOWED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!".  As an example of what this means, basically you can't make a game remake of Custer's Revenge that contains all the themes of Custer's Revenge (raping Native Americans) and simply avoid showing naked bits.  The problem here is that the core theme of the game still revolves around sex/rape, and that's a big no-no on Twitch.

Having said that, I am not making a banned game list, if only because there can still be inspiration to be found in something as depraved as Custer's Revenge.  I could easily see someone doing a parody of the game that involves no nudity or sexually explicit content.  So to keep it simple, with this rule change, just use common sense.  If it's not something you'd be willing to show to your mother, you probably don't want to show it to Twitch either.  While I have no intention to do so, I reserve the right to refuse to play any game submitted to the game jam on Twitch on the grounds that I fear it breaks Twitch ToS.

Now that we've gotten all that crap out of the way, I'm really excited for this jam, and I can't WAIT to see what you all come up with.  Thanks for participating, and good luck to you all!

-Highsight

The biggest problem I need to be careful of is the Twitch ToS.  I need to make sure that all games I play on stream follow it carefully, or I can potentially lose my channel.  Twitch is weird when it comes to nudity, wherein games like Witcher 3 is allowed, even with the sex scenes, but say a Hentai game is not so much allowed.  To reference the exact rule they have:

Sexually Explicit, Adults-Only, and Other Prohibited Games
Nudity, pornography, sex, or sexual violence can not be a core focus or feature of the game in question, and gameplay with modded nudity is entirely prohibited. Occurrences of in-game nudity are permitted, so long as you do not make them a primary focus of your content and only spend as much time as needed in the area to progress the game’s story. Games rated Adults Only (AO) by the ESRB are not permitted in content on Twitch.

I'm going to expand my Game Jam rules to include "No Sexually Explicit content" thank you for asking first!

Absolutely!  There's a #1 in the title for a reason. ;)

I can work with WebGL, however, it's better for everyone involved if I have a desktop exe of some sort.  I prefer standalone packages that don't require an installer, just unzip and go is golden.  I will be streaming using a Windows machine, and I will not be able to stream any Android builds of a game.

Can't start the game on Windows. When I try to I get:

"There should be 'Hexopus'DateNight_Data' folder next to the executable"

Really brilliant game. Enjoyed it very much, and was surprised how much content was in it for something done for a game jam.

Sadly, the size of it can also be concidered an issue as there's a very large emphasis on non-linear exploration, trying to find a goal that is never truly defined. For all its greatness, I doubt many people will finish it simply because they will repeat many of the same things over and over again until they get bored and call it quits.

This game will surely be expanded on in the future, and have a more tangable overarching goal, and that is the game that I look forward to playing the most! Best of luck guys, great work.

Really great game! It has a wonderful sense of style, small scope, and easy to pick up mechanics. Excellent work, I look forward to seeing more from you.