I adore the art in this game, but after 4 or 5 nights of easy and repetitive combat and days that were short and didn't seem to be leading to any progress, I stopped playing. Which makes me sad, because everything else about this game is lovely, but it didn't seem to be going anywhere.

This game is one my favorite jam games I have ever played. Most jam games with as much dialogue as this would have me skipping,  but the writing was so consistently bonkers that I wanted to finish the game just to read the rest of the story.

The combat is  extremely rough around the edges, with an extremely narrow band in which you're close enough to melee an enemy but not touching it, which causes you to take damage. Because my keyboard is a bit busted, it was easier to just play without the dash move, so if that's the key mechanic that makes it work, I apologize. But my experience was that enemies were too tough and too dangerous to be worth fighting, so after a couple deaths I decided to play it as a stealth game, and it was much more fun that way. The terrible melee attack, the not-quite-long-enough stun, and the superbly weird music all came together to create a lot of tension as I explored the level. The boss fight was even really polished and the perfect difficulty to ramp up the challenge without stonewalling my progress.

The only criticism I can really make is that the game seems to want the player to destroy everything in their path, which seems like it would be extremely difficult, besides as I found not really incentivized mechanically. More health pickups, a more forgiving melee attack, and some checkpoints seem in order if that's the desired experience. Otherwise, the game doesn't really signal to the player that stealth is an option, with the first enemy encountered explicitly being the only enemy type that's generally easier to kill than to sneak past.

At any rate, this is an amazing game, thank you for sharing!

This is an extremely polished game, but the story vexes me. The good magic user is called a wizard, and looks the part, but their magic is described as holy, which implies they are in fact some kind of divine caster, such as a cleric. Likewise, the enemy is called a witch, but looks like the grim reaper and summons what appear to be undead minions, which is more of a necromancer thing than a witch thing. The actual gameplay is tight, tho!

The character art is the only part of this game I feel really proud of so I'm glad you like it! Thanks for playing!

I goofed on the GUI design on this one. There's a fifth category of skills called Prayer below the other four that allows you to get your skills back. So definitely this is a huge mark against the game as far as scores go, but if you want to finish, that's how the combat system works.

Okay, but hear me out: maybe the robot, who (spoilers, for anyone else reading this) has human blood, is also just a figment of the girl's imagination, just like the player

This is ridiculously cool to play. An interesting quirk of the game (I wouldn't even call it a bug, it doesn't detract from the gameplay) is that if you reflect a bullet but that bullet doesn't collide with the ship that fired it, it travels forever and stays on the minimap for a hot minute. I tracked one of these down to see what it was and my core was still alive when I got back, which suggests the difficulty should probably ramp up at some point, but this is balanced very well as a jam game.

I think my favorite part about this game is that the house does not logically or physically make any sense. The caretaker being an imaginary friend based on a stuffed toy is an obvious reading, but it's the level design that really elevates this to surreal character study. The one thing I will point out as someone who has done a good couple of artsy walking sims is: when your movement isn't a game mechanic, there's no reason for it to be as physicsy as it is in this. You want the tiniest bit of acceleration and deceleration so your character feels alive, but not a ton so that walking feels good since the player's gonna do a lot of it. But overall, I enjoyed this!

Have to agree with everyone's comments about feedback, and I'll add that everything having a ton of hp didn't help. That said, this is a nice-looking jam game, and the tank movement is a sweet bit of juice

OMG best game??

Overall presentation is solid. I wish the game started a little slower so I had a chance to figure out things like how enemies can just be killed with the shield bash before being overwhelmed with enemies. Game is fun once you get over that part of the difficulty curve, tho. Nice job!

Hmm, yeah, those are both issues. There's scripts for enemy hp gui but I didn't leave myself enough time to get one set up and working with all the whacked out stuff I was doing with the engine, and I'm so used to the RPG Maker gui that I didn't think about visibility issues on the window skin I made. I'll definitely look into both for the post-jam built, tho. I'm glad you think it was well-made! ^ - ^

🎃 Happy Halloween 🎃 

Thank youu!!

The game definitely needs a minimap, sadly. Environmental damage is there simply to lampshade how if you found yourself on a planet that isn’t your home, you probably shouldn’t respond by opening fire on everything in sight, but it’s incredibly half-assed so in the end it’s my least favorite part of the game. I’m glad you enjoyed it though! Thanks for playing!

I have a small  server I run for friends I've made who play magic: the gathering, so I'm not completely new to it. Not 100% finished atm, but I got a bot and some basic channels set up. Send me a friend request on discord so I can send you an invite privately before opening it up to everyone

Fair! I've thrown together a discord or two and I'd be down to set one up for this jam or give you a hand if desired

I'm definitely down as long as I finish something

This is such a cool jam idea! I cannot wait to start something comically overscoped like an RPG you play with postcards.

Is there a discord server associated with the jam?

This was fun! Funny story, I saw the instructions on the title screen, went "sweet, Binding of Isaac controls!", and proceeded to do everything backward until I realized the game actually had the opposite of BoI controls and crossed my hands over each other so I wasn't fighting my muscle memory, so I have to agree with what others are saying about WASD and arrow keys. I really liked the tradeoff of moving slower while healing, and just wish it felt like it mattered more (or sooner, at least). The game started to drop frames at around score 150 or so, which seems odd for a game that seems pretty easy on processing, but I can't say if this was a too many enemies on screen or a web build or a memory leak issue. But overall, this is a nicely put together game!

Holy shit this was literally perfect. The adorable superhero story, the graphics, the incredible soundtrack, the difficulty curve, even in the UI is incredibly polished. The pacing of moving between simple tutorial puzzles and harder puzzles that take the training wheels off reminded me of Portal in a fantastic way. This is the second game I've played that I wouldn't be surprised to see come in first!

UI-heavy games like this are really difficult to do within the constraints of a game jam, so what you managed to accomplish is impressive. Had to figure out how planting works from others' comments, but the graphics are all super cute. The unique shop art and title screen are all very pleasing to look at

Loved the atmosphere, loved that you could change the palettes, and I loved how much the game doesn't explain to you. Realizing that the game area had expanded the first time and that I really was a tiny robot in a huge forest was a really cool moment. I kind of wish the sawblade enemies were a little more telegraphed, like the towers, but given the choice having them be slightly overpowered definitely made the narrative feel of the game better. If this doesn't take first I'll be surprised

A tale as old as game jams...

Really cool concept, but had a lot of little decisions that left the game feeling pretty hostile. Failure is punishing, but if you take things too slowly, you're punished for that, too. For how much of combat is running away from enemies, it felt bad not to be able to shoot in a direction other than the one I was moving in. And enemies all sponged damage, with levelling up not increasing damage in a noticeable way. That all said, the graphics were all superb and I enjoyed playing this!

Very cute game! Difficulty was easy enough that I could fumble through without knowing what I was doing and just started to feel challenging at the end. Controls were a little tricky to wrap my head around but since I don't a working mouse atm I liked that it worked with just a keyboard

This is very balanced like a jam game, but I appreciate the Lord of the Rings-ness of it!

Looks sick! I find it alarming that enemies seem capable of air-comboing the player indefinitely with no clear mechanical cause/effect besides one of them managing to hit you and deciding that it wants to keep doing that, but I had fun!

I adore the premise of this

It makes me so happy to see you kept working on this!

I love that you can just skip planets in this game. It's so cool

This is brilliant. The planetary gravity really sets this entry apart from the rest. It would've been nice to see a smoother difficulty curve, with the jumps getting harder on average over time, but I had a tone of fun with this

Took me a hot minute to figure out that the reason I was losing so fast was that both bananas and strawberries, fruits which are frequently used as ingredients in deserts, count as not sweets. Super cute art tho!

Cool interpretation of the theme!

The theme (Sweets) is optional. The limitation (2 buttons) is mandatory, and this passes that

Oh hey, a fellow Piskel user! Neat game, felt over-polished in some places (the screen warp was a little excessive) but under-polished in others (some kind of feedback like a sound effect when the player dies would've been nicer than just respawning and having the score reset) but you created a very visually striking game. Congrats on using the limitation well!

Haha, thanks! Glad you liked my goofy flavortext. The author has hinted that the characters get married in the next volume but the publisher has not announced a release date

I can relate. If you put a post-jam build up I'd be happy to try it!

That's a fair point! I  copied the entire movement code from another project of mine that had a lot less space, and by the time I implemented it I was a bit of a rush. Glad you enjoyed the other parts!

Managed to rescue 10 of the cats. One clipped through the fence when a dog caught up to me, the other was never seen (the arrow just pointed dead to the left even at the edge of the map). But I can't be mad, I just played a game about rescuing cats!