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I really, really want to love this... And I guess I do, but it doesn't love me back?

Here's my problem with it: it's _glacially_ slow. The permanent upgrades feel like a very, very small bumps, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. The "time +10s" bonuses on items - unclear, what exact time? What "read rate"? The speed at which the uncovered data is downloaded into your kit? If that's so - those seem pointless, never once been caught wishing "darn, if only I had more data rate!". (And I'm something like... 12 hours into the game now)

The "fast-forward" consumable seems pointless as well - tried it once, came away with almost no data.

The "liquid cash" stuff is... Interesting. It's nice to be able to spend money to dive deeper, let me climb all the way to row 560 on one run, but you actually lose more money than you gain that way :D had to throw away so much data on the way there, because otherwise "overencumbered" debuff to "getting caught speed" gets ya. The liquid cash that's the other way around, making money off mining - think those typically cost more than you can mine with them :D

B.Reader is not really viable. Tried pouring every upgrade into it, only got to, like, row 230. Compared to arc scraper, that can fairly easily carry you to 400 just on its own.

Deep dive is pretty much mandatory :/

Good stuff (aka minor_incentive :P)! Atmosphere, the vibe is positively magnetic. It really pulls off the "dark corners of the web" theme. The first 15 minutes, when you can decide to NOT turn in your first hard-scraped data for a quest and instead sell it and buy some trinkets - clever! Even "lorem ipsum" fillers here and there add to the tone. And all that magic before any sound or music in the game, massive kudos there. When you really pump your run and the arc goes ham, buzzing with crits four rows and there are bursts of explosions, and plasma is chewing the whole perimeter through a hole burrowed through by the drone - OOF! Feels good.

Overall, the weakest part of this game is meta progression. "A game is a series of (preferably interesting) choices" - right now all the interesting choices are within the run, and there are next to none outside of it. Man, I really, really want to love this... But it does not love me back.

Using FFWWDD framework:

Frustrating - meta progression seems to get stuck fairly quickly, you hit a ceiling, you bought out all the cool equipment, you jump on a server with a familiar set of consumables in your kit, and it's just... grind. Same run, every run.

Favorite - the aesthetics, and how the numbers go brrr when you pimped your mining operation within the run

Wanted - wanted to have at least some upgrades to my utilities to be permanent! Let me pick a tool to start with? Or several? (no, scraper consumable doesn't count :P)

Wand (if I had a magic wand, what would I change) - aside from "meta progression that's enjoyable", and obvious sound+music, I would really dig more complex playing field. Instead of just a singular well where blocks fall, it could be a maze that you're trying to navigate, from time to time coming across crossroads and deciding where to turn; there could be hints where the goodies are, where the bad stuff is, fragments of a map maybe.. So you connect to a server, and start "exploring"; and the firewall is trying to catch you, going from its own spawn point. But firewall can move through the blocks, while you need to mine them out, which is slow.. So you get caught, but you apply some permanent upgrades and now it's easier to push through data on this server. Something like that...

Doing - whole lot of waiting for the memory to fill up to buy next level of "security", and another one, and another one... slowly waiting to "die" :D

Describe - "it's a very stylish cyberpunk breakout that plays itself"

With only the best wishes.

This is like a tantalizing little teaser, a precursor to a game; unfortunately it ends almost immediately :( The movement seemed to be absolute to the world axes, which was a bit confusing once I escaped the jar and slugged around the room.

Loved the visual style, and the core premise is intriguing, sad to see it in such a small scope T_T

Neat little stealth experience! It felt a bit too tough to crawl through, the robot spotting is way too quick to really do anything about - would be awesome if the dash had much more range and allowed you to somehow escape the robots :) Good job making it!

Not bad :) Others have commented already on the movement speed; I would add that the combat feels "mushy" - a screenshake would make substantial difference, so would the hit sound effects. Block seemed entirely useless, because it takes SO LONG to establish it (and in one dungeon it kept de-blocking for some unknown to me reason); strong attack didn't seem to work for me. I ended up with 20 shadow essences and only 2 water ones, when I required 3 to progress - after three dungeon runs :( The drops seemed random, and because the combat didn't feel good - that's where I stopped playing. Still, congratulations on getting to the finish line with a rather complex and feature-rich game where nothing is outright broken!

That was quite something!

First of all, extremely playable. I hadn't had a slightest hitch except for some FPS drops when the torch went out - which made that event EVEN MORE STRESFUL. Also, playing with a trackball I got extremely frustrated - between that, the mouse reshuffling the ingredients and customers ZERO PATIENCE SERIOUSLY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?! I lost 4 rounds and these losses felt unfair. Oh, you expect me to brew not one, but TWO liquids for a potion, interspersed with ingredients that also require chopping and grinding, and meanwhile one of these will be in the cupboard and then the mouse will move it to the top shelf? Yeah, screw me I guess :D

But once I put the laptop on "performance" mode the slowdowns were alleviated somewhat, and adding a mouse in place of a trackball helped with precision and timing of brewing, and then I managed to beat the game.

All that's here in the game is already working, and working extremely well; I would only add that for this to be shippable it needs content expansion (different stages to the game, so there's a sense of progression; maybe a bit of story) and maybe some balancing - I can totally see the player starting off with half the ingredients and potion recipes, and gradually building up in complexity and hecticness.

Overall: 10/10, I think this is a real contender for the prizes!

P.S.
That was one expensive bulb.

Thanks for playing and leaving feedback! I am considering making a post-jam version, would it be alright if I pinged/messaged you with news about that?

Thank you for playing and providing feedback! The disorienting effect of going through the shadows is definitely not on you - jam time constraints didn't allow for enough polish on the mechanic, and while it works reasonably well in some cases, in others the way the character re-orients themselves after transgressing is unintuitive, my bad ^^'

Thank you for playing! I appreciate the encouraging feedback, makes me think I should do a post-jam version of this and maybe brave putting it on a store :) The critique about the health potion and kicks only working sometimes is absolutely fair, I was very pressed for time when implementing these and went with the quickest and dirtiest of solutions ^^'

Thank you for taking the time to play it on the stream! Appreciate you highlighting some of the issues :)

Okay, so initially it was a bit obtuse... I think I got the mechanics closer to the end of them? The hints table with question marks was throwing a bit of a curve ball to me, and the time pressure was stressful :D

I can see this going on for much longer with expanded gamut of ingredients and removed/reduced time pressure (maybe only some customers are on a tight time limit?); one time I got stuck in a bit of panic waiting for ingredients I have wasted to respawn - thankfully the customer didn't leave in that time and I was able to fulfil their request :)

Well done!

Pretty competent little first-person platformer. Physics can use a once-over - wallruns are way too powerful, allowing me to circumvent most of the (intended?) platforming by just endlessly jumping while running against a wall. Potions proved unnecessary, the "shadow realm" slomo was sweet. Voice acting: marvelous! 

Overall a nice short adventure, congrats!

What in the world :D

Initially I was a bit confused by seemingly not being able to pick up/place drinks on the counter on the first night - perhaps it was a bug? So I fended off all the offenders with my scratchy-scratchy claws (?) and kept on brewing... Then the second night - a-ha, drinks, now I can satiate my customers! Marvelous. Not bad, good, okay, I think I got this.... Alright, vampires are a bit of a problem, but I can deal with that... Mummies?.. Oh lord, these parchment-wrapped monstrosities are PARCHED! OH LORD OH PLEASE NO STOP CLIMBING OVER EACH OTHER I GOT DRINKS RIGHT HERE BUT I ONLY HAVE TWO HANDS!

Got all the way past Night 8 and then I sort of had my fill. The game is very well executed, it taps into the spirit of Undercooked with sublime finesse without requiring you to have a spouse, or friends... Solid. Expand/rework the brewing system, add different stages, maybe local co-op (which, with controller support, should enable over-internet co-op via Steam facilities?) - and honestly, ship it. It's worth it.

The game is pretty darn nice; it's a small little puzzler that reminded me of Spring Falls thematically and visually. Speaking of, while colors in the game are very nice, they were, at times, confusing for me :D I kept interpreting the orange of "absence of blue" as full light and getting mixed up my lights and shadows. But honestly, that's about the only critique I have for the game - it communicated clearly when plants are not thriving, their requirements were pretty easy to understand and then it was just a geometry puzzle of trying to figure out how to place them to satisfy all the constraints. Lovely brain teaser!

Still, the game has a neat concept to it and is a good achievement for a first one! Well done :)

Lovely little slasher; the movement was a tad clunky at times, but  overall pretty slick! I enjoyed the high degree of polish (for a jam game), all the systems were in place and the gameplay was pretty tight. There's definitely space to expand on the moveset and level design, and backpedaling enemies are annoying as well, but overall - a very well-rounded entry!

Congrats :)

Short, sweet, effective!

Making a puzzle game is hard. Making a puzzle game for a jam is even harder. Yet, you guys have pulled it off - massive kudos! The game doesn't trip over its systems, puzzles are logical and engaging (although I will grant that they are simple - but it's a good thing for a jam entry!), the art style is striking (yes, I know, Kenney assets, but you still gotta set up lighting and select the right stuff!) - you can definitely grow this concept into something bigger and put it out on a store.

Now, for critique... The movement felt a fair bit "stiff", I think I once noticed a lack of coyotee time (if it's present - it's a bit harsh for a game that's not about mastering jumping between platforms), and the spinning carousel of abilities/effects was a touch distracting. Liked the left side panel with them though, that was really well done!

Congrats on your jam entry :)

This game is hard! But not overwhelmingly so; I think there's a number of bugs that prevented it from being a really sleek experience - sometimes my dudes would get hung up on trying to deliver minerals to a depot, sometimes (it feels like) monsters would be just immune to damage (no feedback will do that to a player - they'll be assuming the worst crimes on the game's part). And having each depot its own separate counter of minerals for when it's allowed to spawn, and having a TOTAL between all depots displayed in the screen was very confusing - at one point I had two depots and 39 crystals, but couldn't spawn from either of those :D

Also, it's a bit confusing that dudes are "bound" to a depot and when you're giving an order to attack a monster, only dudes from the currently selected depot would attack (and there's no way to select a depot WITHOUT spawning a new dude if you've got resources for it, but that's a nitpick).

DESPITE THAT. It's been a wonderful tiny little strategy game that I'd honestly play much more of once it's streamlined a bit (add feedback to the player, please! HP bars/numbers, sounds upon miner/enemy death, other game events) and there's a bit more content (the idea with the research tower, "prospecting" building that spawns/discovers minerals and the depot is nice, and there's definitely space for more!)

Congrats on delivering this game to the jam :)

This was a bit brutal :D Lots going on for a jam game - you've got pleasant art, voice acting (!!!), different gameplays... LOTS!

I liked the flip-flop between action sequences and slower-paced puzzle ones; although I proved too dense to crack the "other solution" for Level 3, unfortunately :D The bullet-hell felt a bit too chaotic, but that's probably due to time constraints of the jam. The "push/pull" sokobans are the best sokobans, of course, so big points there :)

I think that there's enough of an idea and skeleton here for a post-jam pass - I feel like this could be made into a full game. The core systems that are already in are in a very playable state, just need tuning, better tutorial/introduction than list of combinations in game's description, and with some effort put in I can see it asking money in stores, totally deserves that.

Neat.

Loved the presentation, there's some strong visual language in the game; the gameplay is.. there, but falls a bit flat on account of lacking any kind of juice/pizazz. First two levels were solvable without engaging the core mechanic of transmuting yourself to "sun-resistant", which rendered the first "tutorial" level less effective than it could have been, and having to switch between looking at the center of the screen (where the main action is), bottom left (where the countdown for "effect active" is), and top right (where current health is) is the main pain point I'd seek to remedy.

But overall a very nice little entry, it's playable, it does what it sets out to do, and looks great while doing so :) Congrats!

Comments are now enabled, speak your mind :)

That will be the plan :)

A bunch of features that haven't made it would've made faster-than-player nun an absolute joy to play against :) I will be returning to this idea some time later though! Thanks for playing :)

I'm well aware that the build is botched, the feature set is incomplete, and what little made it into the game successfully could use a couple days of fine-tuning :) All fair points. That's 48 hour jam for you. But hey, thanks for playing!

This is so stupid and SO FUN! I love it! Absolutely brilliant!

Great job on tuning all the movement variables, even with one button the controls feel tight and fair!

Started out fun, and then it wasn't. Sharks spawning in right on top of stray fish was way too brutal

This is DELICIOUS! And да, я потрогал это.

And now you know, at least a little bit :) Thanks for playing!

Thank you for your feedback! Glad you had fun playing it :)

Unfortunately, last minute fixes led to a fairly broken build (as they always do) :D Thanks for playing!

Heya, cool idea! If you want to expand upon it, I think leaning into puzzle aspect would be good :)

Quite neat! It took a little while to adjust to the controls, but frantic bouncing is fun, and the sounds! Oh lawrd xD

This is absolutely lovely! Although I only figured out double jump by the world-2 on accident :D Still, very clean, very slick, well done!

P.S. the hitboxes were so punishing :D

Good job getting your cube game to a finish line! :D I would love to see this expanded into a bigger game, in the vein of "Balance". Think there's something in there, with this rounded cube.

'ello, and I'm in! Though there's a chance I won't produce much between my job and family, I'd like to take that leap of faith and try to make something really cool. Been too long since I've done any jamming (last time it was LD29 I believe) :) Good luck to everyone out there!

Tool list, if anyone's interested:
Unity3D (engine)
Caustic 3 (audio)
Paint.Net (2D)
SketchUp (-sorry, what?! -ye... You'll see.)