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I enjoyed reading through the problem spaces and design decisions. It’s nice to see how other developers discover and think through problems. Thanks for sharing your progress for others to learn from!

Thanks so much for checking our game out! We would love to figure out how to expand some of the systems and polish it up from the jam version. We want everyone to be able to conquer the Forest Bosses once and for all.

I enjoyed the animations and liveliness of all the characters. The sound and music fit well with the game. Getting currency for each type of enemy was an interesting concept and it leaned into the feeling of collecting bountiful produce. Nice submission!

Thanks so much for the feedback! We love our ORBS+1, but it might be a bit too strong in this initial version. We'll keep working on it to polish up the experience, but I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Heh, well I can tell you that there will at least be one more update so we can fix some of these icon issues 🤣I'll make a note to post a devlog update when we start to make changes to see where we can take the idea. Would love to continue getting your thoughts on it too in hopes we can make it to a full game!

That's a really great point about accessibility. The orbs are coded to be Fire, Earth, Wind, and Water, so that would be a great way to pull that through and make it easier to read.  Thanks so much for that feedback and really glad to hear you enjoyed it!

Just wanted to say that I used this workflow for GWJ 93 and it was really effective. We didn't quite finish getting all the systems in by the end of Sunday, but we were able to get much more content in and control more of the scope creep due to getting the main scenes in place. Definitely want to continue practicing this workflow for rapid prototyping!

Thanks so much for checking it out! We're glad you got to the end and we hope we can squash some of those bugs post jam. Sorry about that.

Hey all, if you're reading this we ran into an issue with the export where the Skill Icons weren't exporting properly .

This is another great write up. Sounds like you’ve been busy with lots of game content in a short amount of time. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with others too! You make tooltips sounds easy 😄

Looking forward more info on the playtest version to see what you’ve been brewing up.

This was a great breakdown of the problem an solution. You're getting ready for deterministic rollback netcode 😉 Great post!

Looking forward to seeing the game come to Steam!

I like marbles, but orbs or capsules work too. The original red and blue ones remind me of gachapon machine capsules.

With everything being on a grid, “same-y” might be okay for the people chasing an organized, monochrome masterpiece 😄 Worth testing and getting player feedback on for sure.

Using colors to indicate which category an item belongs to is really smart and it makes it so much more clear about when those items change it to a different category. The changes all look awesome and I’m looking forward to new versions!

Cheers! Thanks so much for checking out our game. It's great to hear that the onboarding was easy to get into.

This is such a well written article and provided so much insight into your creative process. My main takeaway was how important planning and getting to the "feature complete" point on that first weekend can help setup for the rest of the week as you fill in the gaps for "development complete". I also work full time and I really want to rethink how I'm setting myself up for success to just get a few things done each night. It would be amazing to have game dev just be something I regularly get to do and grow at without it feeling like I have to make tons of sacrifices to get time at my desk. The approach you walked through gives me inspiration  to   achieve that balance (with the right prioritization!).

Thanks so much for taking the time to write this up. The new UI looks really well thought out and I can tell it's factoring in a lot of the feedback from the jam as well. Looking forward to following your journey! I hope this article finds its way to many other developers who also need some encouragement to find that joy in game dev too.

Edit: I just saw you won this GWJ as well! Huge congrats and well earned!

Thanks so much! Really looking forward to it.

If you do end up posting, would you be open to sharing more about how you pace yourself for the GWJs? My first jams were actually GWJ 53-55, and ever since then I’ve looked up to your submissions as the gold standard for what is possible to achieve. It would be cool to get a behind the scenes look of development process and see how you make the most of the 10 days. Totally understandable if you don’t want to share that too!

Ohhhh, okay good to know. I think I’m too used to autobattlers now where they have them in the main screen. My bad on that. You’ve given me a reason to go back and get the salty run back against the final boss 😂

It’s always inspiring to see the game you put out and I’m blown away as to how much content and polish gets put into your GWJ games. Do you have a newsletter or channel where you do any kind of updates? Would love to follow your game dev work more closely if so!

That would be awesome to have a diagram in the room. Then I would feel like I’m learning whole process and it’s on me to explore the knowledge of the room. I like that idea!

Thanks for playing our game!  We had a lot of ideas around how to incorporate abilities and spells. One other idea was having the player get the potions to use as they clear recipes as consumables. The MP system ended up being interesting because they player can risk MP to try to gain more. We thought the system had room to expand to other spells with more time. If you were still curious about what the spell do, we included it in the pause menu. Cheers!

Thanks so much for playing our game! I   love the music too, but after listening to it so  much during playtesting I find myself humming it randomly now haha.

Honestly, people are missing out on the life changing advice at the end there 😉

Ayyy, let's go. You nailed it!

Grats on the high round count! That's impressive  satisfactory.

Fellow alliteration with "Potion" entry! 😄

There was something really satisfying about filling up the potions and  getting high percentages. At first I was really confused, but then I noticed that pressing down looped to the top. Once I got that, it was fun to look at the pattern and then plan out my path to match. I thought I could game the system by watching the percentage change, but I actually did much better playing it as intended. Very cool design!

Thanks so much for playing our game! The idea kinda came together as pieces were added, so it's great to get that feedback that it combined well. Cheers!

This was a fun one. Very high appeal on the graphics and vibes. This was an interesting take on the "hit the mark" style of minigame. Managing multiple teas is hard, but I liked the design language you used to guide the player toward understanding how to time teas. In a way, it's similar to a rhythm game. Well done!

It's cool to see an incremental game as a submission. Collecting the fruit from the trees was a neat loop.

Very clear game loop. There's a lot of charm to everything. Nice submission!

The level design nailed the eerie vibe. 

This was a cool throwback to GB games. It reminded me of Game and Watch games, but everything tied together.

Thanks so much for checking out the game. Nothing beats a good checklist!

Thanks so much for checking the game out! Hopefully you were able to use the spells to amass a fortune 💰

I feel you on that break. It's always a crunch right at the end. Hope it was a fun jam for you!

The recipes were really clear and it was quick to learn what to do. The VFX touches were really nice and added to the lighting of the room. Well done!

Haha, the ending was great. This was an interesting take on the Minit style of games. Thanks for submitting it! It was enjoyable to piece together.

Wow, really impressive! It has a really eerie atmosphere. The last one was too many steps for me, but I definitely was immersed in the game.

Thanks for giving the game a play!