itch.io

Unfortunately a bit too buggy to be able to play as intended. The art is nice. I didn't really know where to take the poop or what to feed the skrunkles, so I may have made some immoral decisions.

It's a cool idea, I'd love to see other ways in which a dice protagonist could be used to explore, use tools, solve puzzles, etc.

I wasn't sure at first whether the code was the number I needed to be, or the number I needed to match to 7 to get through the door.

The lag seems a little bit harsh at times, in level 2 it makes the platforming kinda tough.

Nice game overall!

Absolutely gorgeous game, a 3D setting with the GB color palette and resolution looks great. The song is also extremely catchy, really well done on the music front.

Echoing other reviews, due to the limited color palette it is difficult to see what's coming up on the road. I think if the run speed was a little slower, it would help with that.

Very polished and fun, it reminds me a bit of Necrodancer. The art and colors are very nice, and it's all presented super well. The movement controls are unique, but I think they work nicely on the most part. Though as the levels get bigger and more difficult, there's a lot more time spent mashing the button which irritated my hand a bit.

The difficulty spike after mortars are introduced (level 3?) is pretty extreme. You face a single mortar, then immediately get funneled into a room with like 10 of them and a bunch of slimes. Even after understanding that I had to walk between them, having to fight the two leftover in a small hallway alongside 2 other slimes approaching me felt like quite a lot to ask of me when I was still just barely being introduced to them.

The next level had a similar jump in difficulty for me, when you suddenly step into a marathon of slimes and mortars. I can see there's strategies and patterns to learn, and situations being set up specifically to teach me, but there's such a huge and continuous influx of enemies that it makes it hard to know what I'm supposed to be learning or focusing on. In this particular level, dying meant charging through an army of easy slimes just to get another attempt, so eventually I ended up giving up. I think the design at this point of the game could benefit from simpler, more isolated challenges that demonstrate certain patterns and strategies, then saving the huge gauntlets for when the player has more experience with them.

But I do think this is a very good showing. A very impressive and well-made project overall.

Unfortunately, I didn't make it past Thursday due to a softlock.

I noticed the left side of the level had steps, unlike previous levels, and I'd also noticed you could jump on side-spikes. So with good timing, I jumped off the first side spike trap to reach the step. Everything lined up so well that I was certain I'd found an extremely well-hidden secret, but instead I broke the level lol. I helped Luckie to escape the confines of the game that was hell-bent on killing him, so I'm counting it as a win.

From what I did play, Thursday did seem like a considerable jump in difficulty compared to the previous stages, possibly just because I had a harder time with the falling spike ceilings compared to every other trap. This game is super clever though, taking the rage-inducing trap platformer genre and attaching it to a mechanic that helps to create anticipation and anxiety. It appropriately loops it back into unluckiness as well.

I appreciate that the game was consistent about every bad luck scenario translating into one trap. It never feels unfair, at least beyond what's intended. Having every bad luck trigger work differently was also really great.

I didn't make it to the end, but if it's not there already, a final time, death counter, and number of avoidable bad luck cues you hit would make for interesting end-game stats.

Also, I like the animation of Luckie disintegrating.

A very clever spin on blackjack. It keeps the basic concept of knowing when to stop, and the excitement of pushing your luck for more cards, which helps it keep the spirit of blackjack while expanding it in an interesting way. The one thing it's arguably missing from blackjack is that every single hit is exciting and ultimately matters a lot, whereas naturally if you expand the card count by a lot, you do lose a little bit of that excitement for each card. Though I don't think that's inherently a problem, it might be worth considering how you can play up those moments that you have to draw a dangerous card, or potentially using those dangerous moments to tempt the player with an especially dangerous choice. I think there's an opportunity to do something cool on the "exciting draw" front.

I felt Aces were a little bit of a weak spot in this, for a few reasons. One, it was difficult to really know where I stood on my number, as it's difficult to keep track of which of your Aces are 11s and which ones are 1s. Might be useful to highlight them or something while they're 11 to dictate when that safety net exists. Though it's worth noting if you have enough 11-point aces, it does make your hand much more flexible and removes a lot of the risk.

I did feel that my final build made the game extremely easy. Specifically, I had half cost positive, half cost negative, no face cards, 25 value max, and 25% bonus; with that I was able to draw to my limit 90% of the time without ever risking a bust (with an average of about 2000 points per hand). Nerfing the aces a bit might help, maybe limiting upgrades too so that they only work on either positive or negative cards/not being able to get the upgrade for both sides. Raising the value from 21 to 25 also felt very powerful, since it raises the ceiling it gives you an average of +4 per card and greatly increases your safety threshold (though it's possible those benefits were exaggerated due to my half point upgrades).

I was a little disappointed that cashing in on blackjack didn't give a bonus. It's an extra-risky value to go for, and it could be fun to have to decide whether to cash in for the perfect number bonus, vs trying to go for more cards.

But to reiterate, I think this is an excellent and very well designed game. I had a lot of fun with it.

Awesome! I'm excited to see how it evolves.

This is a cool concept with a nice, simple gameplay loop. The art and general presentation is also nice. It didn't take very long to understand how everything worked. Graphically speaking, it's very polished, which I liked a lot.

I do think the game has some balancing issues. The early-game often ends up being very luck-reliant, since there's a nice chunk of cards that will guaranteed end your run if you fight them. There might generally be some benefit to having a weighed random of sorts, like having it so that higher-damage enemies are more likely to spawn on the right-side cards, or having face cards/aces being added to the deck as you progress through floors, such that there's a little less all-or-nothing right at the start.

Moreso, there's a lot of snowballing with player level. Since leveling up heals you and increases your damage, and that in turn makes it easier to fight more enemies and get more XP, it results in a higher-leveled player gaining levels much more easily. If it's too hard to fight all the enemies, it'll only get harder. Meanwhile, if it's easy to blow through enemies it'll keep getting easier. My two successful runs had me consistently 1-hitting every enemy and 2-hitting every boss starting from floor 3. I'm not sure what would best help with this, though one of my suggestions would be to forego XP on diamond enemies, since the money still seems to be a good reward there; If it's meant to be a negative effect, the extra XP is definitely a more positive outcome.

Good stuff overall, very cool idea.

What did you have trouble with specifically? I've noticed a few puzzles lead to some difficulty, though I have to be careful with what I communicate since I don't want to just give away the puzzles, so it's a fine balance there. If you're having trouble, there's a doc on the game page with hints and answers, though I'd be interested to know where you got stuck.

My masterpiece. The only part of the game that truly matters, in the end.

Thanks! Glad you liked it. Definitely had to adjust a few puzzles in the last few days before submission, and will probably need to adjust a few more afterwards.

Thanks! That's mostly what I was going for, so I'm glad it was on-target.

Thanks! Glad it all made sense from a controls perspective.

The puzzles can be tough. Experimenting with stuff is the best way to approach it, but if worst comes to worst, I have a guide in the game page as well.

There are a few red herrings in the environment, and some stuff that generally helps the look of a city. But most of it should relate to the puzzles in some way. Glad you had fun with it!

I like this one a lot, personally. A very pleasant little experience. I think there's a lot of potential to make this into a unique management sim with those splashes of Overcooked. It's not often you see a game where movement is 1-dimensional, and the way it's done makes for a very interesting dynamic. The UI is also immediately clear, it took almost no time at all to understand what was going on.

It says in your page that you're planning to leave the multiple tools bug in since it makes for an interesting dynamic. I think that's a good headspace, but it does feel like a very strong exploit that you can just grab every tool at the start of the day and no longer need to think about them. I'd leave it, but try to think of a way to balance it so that it's not strictly the best option in every situation.

The fastest move speed was too much for me, personally. I might've preferred a dash button or something.

There's probably a lot of ways to evolve this experience from here. Like tools that can fill multiple meters at a time, tools that require you to be right next to the passenger instead of on the same floor, tools that take longer to fill, tools that fill meters when left on the floor, something like trash that gets dropped occasionally and needs to be disposed of, that sort of thing. If you plan to continue this, my next step would be to see how you can diversify the way the different tools work, and maybe even diversify passenger types. Plate-Up definitely makes for a good reference. I'll be looking out for updates!

It took a while to understand what was going on. A tower defense where you inflict bad luck on the attackers is a fun approach. Here are my recommendations with the general playability as well as teaching info to the player:

• Have the nut sprites in the stash disappear whenever enemies reach it, so you know how many are left. It seems this is the eventual intention with it.
• It might help if the build spaces have like a dotted square blink over them a few times at the start of the level, just to hint on where the build spaces are.
• Most importantly, I think this game would benefit from idle time before waves, like 10 seconds to start setting up your defenses. Right now, the third level starts instantly and you have no time to think about how you want to defend your zone.

Overall, it's a cool project. Handles the Game Boy look very nicely.

Awesome game! Very well designed and polished. The art is tremendous and the music is some of the catchiest I've heard in the jam so far.

I felt there were some weaknesses in the level design, in my case with the introduction/tutorialization of mechanics. There are a few cases of mechanics that are either introduced while the level is trying to accomplish other things (leading to overcomplication), introduced at inopportune moments, or are not set up to clearly convey what's meant to be learned. The easiest example of this is the balloon tutorial at the start, but I had a few others that affected my playthrough. The dynamic for how lightning works and how to avoid it is something I didn't 100% understand even after beating the level. The first poker card platform appears on-screen much later than the pit of spikes and the enemy, which means bubble-jumping to get across will likely be on the player's mind long before they think to throw it at a new object, and the next few appearances don't make that platform easy to play or experiment with. If you go left when you first enter the casino, you'll run into a pretty hard enemy chaining challenge (which if this is the first level visited, this makes for a tough introduction of this mechanic). Even if you rough it out, it isn't clear that your destination is the wheel and not the platform, as you may not have had the chance to learn that mechanic yet. With teaching new mechanics, I've found it's beneficial to isolate the specific lesson you're trying to teach, and to follow it up with some easy and safe placements to familiarize the player with it.

I did also notice a few difficulty spikes which, at least in my experience, felt a little jarring. But there weren't tons of them.

To clarify, I don't think the level design is bad, just held back by a few issues here and there. The fun factor with the level layouts is definitely on-target, and there's clearly a lot of purpose behind everything. A lot of the platform sequences are very well-placed, there's enough repetition to keep everything flowing well, on the most part. The good definitely outweighs the bad.

Very polished and impressive! I've heard it's a huge pain to make minigame compilations like this, so it's great to see one that's so well-made overall. The art is fantastic, fits the tone super well. Some of my favorite little touches were Joe getting hit by the title screen menu, the tray minigame having Joe suddenly be a stick figure, and of course the design of the bully. Lots of attention to detail, with little gags inserted at opportune moments.

There were a few minigames at the start that felt a little unclear. It took me like 5 tries to understand what was going on with "Tame that mane," and the detection seems to be above the comb rather than on the teeth of the comb where I'd expect. With catching the toothbrush, I was confused as to whether it was going to be an A button or D-pad game, and the button prompt comes in right at the end. My hand also missed the toothbrush despite it seeming like I grabbed it. There were quite a few minigames (particularly the ones with a hand coming in) where I wasn't sure if it was a D-Pad game, and it gave me a little trouble. But after those first few games, everything seemed really clear on the most part.

WarioWare does have the benefit of repeating minigames and increasing the pacing over time, leaning into high scores. It really helps them with that frantic, engaging non-stop action. I do think the pacing in this is very good overall, it doesn't need to be WarioWare, but I do think you could've gotten away with repeating a few more minigames with harder/faster versions and possibly some comedic new context. Like having to flick flies away from the flowers after falling into the sewer. But it's great overall.

Now we need a sequel with Pretty Patty where she faces similarly ridiculous scenarios on her way to the date.

This one's really great. Taking a short jaunt across the city and turning it into a bad luck gauntlet is a very fun approach, and I like the variety of effects. Stuff like having to go back for your wallet or watch the floor for wet cement patches makes for a very dynamic experience. My only notes for this game are minor overall. I wasn't a huge fan of the QTE bar, the jump felt a little awkward at times (especially with the construction roadblock hitboxes), the shove doesn't come into play much, and some combinations of effects do result in just getting pummeled and waiting for things to calm down. But I do think these issues are comparably minor and that the game as a whole is really great.

The art and general presentation is strong as well. Really hits that dynamic of the mundane normal city bustle, occasionally getting bombarded with comedically over-the-top misfortune. Awesome work overall.

Fun idea, exploring an environment to cause bad luck and change the environment. I think this concept could benefit from adding puzzles or more controlled manipulation of the environment, as currently it's mostly moving from point A to point B (though finding the unlucky hotspots is still enjoyable).

All the little surfaces in the environment are fun to jump around on, and I like that the credits have collision as well. The art complements this well.

Considering this was made in GB Studio, I wish a ROM file had been included, I would've loved to play it on my SP.

A fantastic game with an excellent amount of polish. A simple but unique concept that's made even better with high quality graphics and sound. The clacks of the dice dropping, the subtle non-intrusive clicks when you cycle your dice, the flashing of dice before they disappear. It's all stupendous. I love games with a lot of polish, so I really appreciate this one.

And for something that seems so blatantly simple, there's a surprising amount of depth behind it. This feels like the kind of game where even the slightest tweak to the balance could shatter it.

The only issue I really ran into with this game was the controls. I consistently mixed up Z/X and would frequently reroll or drop when I meant to do the reverse. I'd really like if you could press down to drop the blocks. It seems natural to me, especially alongside the left/right buttons cycling your dice.

There's probably a lot that can be done with the basic premise of rolling and then cycling your blocks, it'd be cool to see a variety of modes be added in the future.

Funny, unhinged, and manic.

There are a few little things that I think could improve the experience. Like what's already been mentioned, a way to speed up or skip text on replay would be nice. Many of the lines are missing punctuation at the end, which made it a little difficult to read, in combination with sentences that are displayed over multiple textboxes.

I wish the text and dialogue portraits of the characters matched the pixel size of everything around it. That sort of thing won't bother everyone, but I think it would complement these environments and general aesthetic better to have that extra layer of consistency.

The background art is a strong point on this one. Everything looks delightfully deranged. The platypus moon was my personal favorite.

I really liked this one. It's a little janky, but it's the flavor of janky that I like. In the end, I didn't manage to beat it.

The jumping felt mostly fine to me, but the second double jump did create a little ambiguity for me at times. I think if the second jump had some kind of feedback (like the player sprite changing) it may have helped. That said, it wasn't a major issue for me.

The rain mechanic is very cool, a tight and demanding platformer game where you're passively trying to avoid rain makes for a very interesting dynamic. That said, it is difficult to see over the lighter backgrounds.

While I don't personally mind having to restart the game from the beginning, I would have liked if there were some kind of persistence between lives. Making my way across a bunch of screens with precise, meticulous jumps, only to immediately fall in a pit on the farthest screen I've reached hurt my motivation to keep trying after a while. It made it hard to practice and get better at the really tough parts.

The atmosphere in this game is really cool. It's very strange and surreal, I dig the sound design a lot.

Cool style. I enjoyed the surreal, sometimes unsettling circus enemies.

Game felt fine on the most part, though I noted certain things that could be improved, if you wanted to continue on this:

• The camera would benefit from framing the level design a little better. Even just moving it up a few units would probably feel nicer in most cases, as it feels way too low at certain points.
• The spikes can be a little difficult to see. I got hit by a lot of them without even noticing they were there. Their hitboxes also seem considerably bigger than they appear.
• The inverted unlucky mode is a cool idea, though having it come in and out based on time brings a few issues to mind. The first is that if it turns on/off mid-jump it can result in some unfair damage, which can feel more annoying or frustrating than it does unlucky. The other is that it's easier and usually more beneficial to just wait out the clock for things to go back to normal, rather than tackling the challenge with the unlucky mode. This could possibly be fixed by adding a level timer, to pressure the player to keep moving. Alternatively, having unlucky mode turned on and off by environmental effects, like how the first one is triggered by running into a rat, which would give the level design more control to build out platforming made for it.

It's nice overall. The fact that there are so many unique enemies is really cool.

I like the look of the slot machine. The dithering in particular is very nice, and the lights are fun. The grayscale gives it an almost industrial feel which I personally like.

I'm sure most of the feedback I could give here wouldn't be particularly new or surprising information. It's a little difficult to keep track of my score and slot results, the slot position changing at the end of the spin, etc.

If the text could be resized to match the pixel size on the machine, I think it'd complement the look of the machine nicely.

Thank you for the shout-out!

Awesome game! Honestly, if nothing else, I just wish there was more. It ended right around the time I was getting super invested.

The UI took a second to understand. In particular, I hadn't realized that I was supposed to be paying attention to the upper left, and selecting the clock. Additionally, in the first level, the un-selected play/clock sprites looked somewhat similar (with a darker outline) as the selected ones, so I had a little confusion parsing that. Part of me wants to suggest that you should just be going into time selection automatically after every death (since I assume after failure, the player would want to adjust those anyway), but I can also understand if the intention is for the player to navigate that themselves. Still very fun as a whole.

The art and especially the music are both fantastic. The little romantic jingle with the two birds fits the classic toon vibe impeccably. It's a small but brilliant touch, and I feel that it shouldn't go unrecognized.

Thats very high praise, thank you very much!

Thank you very much! I'm happy to hear that, I very much try to go for weird experiences, so I'm glad that I succeeded there.

Dies irae is a certified Heck classic. If you haven't heard it, my personal favorite iteration is the one in Sam & Max (Fugue and Dies Irae).

I knew I was making the first cutscene too long, but my overflowing gluttony wouldn't let me cut anything. It was a malicious and pre-meditated decision.

Glad to help!

Yeah, I've had a lot of trouble with triggers in the past as well, they're very unpredictable.

For me, the issue with the movement wasn't specifically having to use up/left/right/down, but rather that the in-betweens make the player stop. Might just be a way that I use D-pads, but it's common for me to keep the D-pad pressed down and simply sliding my thumb to change directions, rather than un-pressing or re-pressing, so as a result, the player would often stop while I changed directions.

Yeah, GB isn't the best when it comes to frame checks. If you haven't already, a handy trick is to put a 3-4 frame wait at the start of update checks so that it only runs update every few frames. I've never used the RTC before, so it's possible it's an especially demanding task.

This one's really cool. I love the art (and color choice), and doing isometric with GB Studio is very impressive. The environments seem full despite GB(C?) limitations. I also love the presentation of the battles. The health bars, along with the camera panning down into the arena, and the arena itself resembling the overworld placement/environment is super cool. I love that different battles have the characters in different positions. The final boss was super cool, I was surprised to see something so intricate for a game jam game.

Unfortunately, I didn't gel with the gameplay as much. I'd say it's the only weak point in this project. The overworld isometric controls are a struggle. In particular, if you hold a diagonal direction, your character stops entirely, which causes some grief in combination with the isometric view. I've seen how GB Studio handles input, so I'm sure they're not making it easy. Sometimes the collision pokes out in unexpected ways as well, like around doors. I noticed the game chugs a bit on my SP compared to the web player, which is unfortunate since the game looks so good on it.

The battles were alright, but a bit simple. The gameplay does feel a little bit railroaded; I think I would've preferred more monsters appearing at a time, so that I could whittle them down while searching for weaknesses.

None of that ultimately takes away from what works so well for this. This seems like it was a really tough project to make, and the final result is super impressive. I think it's splendid.

Great game. It controls well, it looks great, doing tricks is fun. I like that the cop makes snarky and sarcastic comments on your skateboarding, it's a charming addition.

I like the idea that you can trade off luckiness for better combos, and having the cop car get closer with worse luck is a clever way to create more difficulty there, since it forces you to stay closer to the right. It does seem that the powerups tend to be a little inconsistent even at high luck levels. I had a good luck run where I didn't see a single one. I think there's potential in designing something where you intentionally alternate between good and bad luck to balance healing and points.

It seems the shuv-it may be the best trick choice, since every trick gives the same amount of points as the other tricks and can be done twice in a single jump. But you can chain it into a flip and still land, so it'd be cool if combining them got you extra points. If the two flip tricks gave more points, you'd have 1 shruv-it as the least points, followed by a single flip, followed by the double shruv-it, and then the shruv-it into a flip being the best points/hardest trick. Anything along the lines of using the different tricks to get extra points would be super cool for this.

I think it'd be fun to have faster scrolling options, for some high-octane skateboarding action. Like a difficulty setting, or a survival mode where the screen gets faster every minute or so.

Overall, this was fun. There's some good depth beneath the surface, and I think there's potential for it to be an outright excellent arcade-style game.

One thing that could be interesting is if different spaces have different skill dice. That way you're balancing the quality of the die in your space vs how many opportunities you'll have left before reaching the boss. In any case, it'd be a cool one to see more developments on.

A fun, simple game. The reset sign being used for the puzzles makes for a fun trick, and gave a lot of the puzzles extra depth. Though I think many of them were a little too easy. I wasn't a huge fan of the final challenge, since it was a big area out in the open and the crows were seemingly turning randomly (plus their detection seemed a little weird).

This note's relatively minor, as I don't think it's too obtuse or anything, but it'd be nice if there was a story reason for the logs being cleared up to connect with reaching the crows.

Overall, I had fun with it. I like that the game confirms that you don't need to return to puzzle areas after getting the items, nothing in the main progression was confusing or frustrating, and the art is charming. Well done. I do wish a GB rom was included as I would've enjoyed playing this on my SP.

Thank you! One of my goals was to help the world feel very interconnected, so I'm glad that came through.

Thanks! Still gotta play that one, it looks like one I'd enjoy.

Thank you! I'm a big fan of small, polished experiences.

Thank you! I still need to try yours, it looks very unique.

Thanks!