itch.io

Won't reveal my inspiration as these are all ace and I might try again later.

Enjoyed this a lot. Reminds me of my "Office of Offers: Beat the week" game, only nicer graphics (and no 1-bit constraint). The icons and descriptions work really well, no need for headhunter jargon (I didn't even look at their classes after repeated firings). Also, I'm assuming music was your own, it was very repetitive, I think only 4 bars, but it worked. I will not whine about not having a composer again, it was sweeett!

I had to come here and read Team Sloop's comment about dragging stuff at random to figure out how it worked. Now I'm worried my game will feel that unintuitive to first-time players.

My immediate impression- red-light-green-light, with coins, nice!

On point with the micro management giving us mysterious knobs and dials with no obvious purpose. They were fun to play with. I am not convinced the blue button on the coolant has any purpose. The 3 digits... they blew up my stash... The pusher, hmm, very micro-management.

I suffered serious lag once I was given my final goal and told I was being timed. It made lining things up really difficult. But I could see, having taken 25 minutes to even get my target I was on a hiding to nothing. I finally gave up when the RNG I bet my retirement gave me bombs instead of prizes.

Took me a while to notice the volume slider at the bottom. I  thought the sound effects were good, but the music got annoying, would've been nice to control them separately, and a menu to restart, especially when you tell me I am being timed! Permanently on-screen tutorial was a nice touch but found it could get out of sync telling me stuff too late, or stuff I already knew.

Didn't think I'd see micro management become fun, but this is the best synergy of the two.

I wanted to cut sound, but no sound at all made me doubt everything was working. If I wanted, in my game, I at least had some free music playing so I knew the audio bus would accept any SFX I could find or tempt a composer to work on. Not proud of my sound effects, but it is such a quick fix if you have (having chosen some) an hour (maybe less [*flex*]) spare at the end.

Amazing. The game is frustrating micro management, exactly as intended. Graphics and implementation really shine.

I had some issues with the pointer escaping which were quickly resolved by concentrating on one task, the game.

I wanted to start again after running out of time reading the instructions and finding I had a monumental pile of coins covering two orders which I could not, now, distinguish.

Truly a valiant, original, and pretty fun take on micro management.

No sound, no menu to quickly start again, but I probably need a whole play through getting everything wrong to learn from.

The writing is too small. I could not see if the price was 60c or 80c. So I moved to give him it all back, and it all fell into the dispenser slot. Getting stuff into that slot was like asking a dog/2-year-old to pour their own cereal. It looks easy, but isn't. My boss throwing money at me added to the realistic pressure feeling.

Pretty well tuned, orders take about the allotted time. I gave up when I saw double orders coming in. It is unforgiving in that I had the mess of all previous orders in the way.

The sliders are placebos for micro management!

lol, no seriously, I struggle to feel they have any effect. The formula is that the slider value (going from 0 to whatever is displayed at the top) is divided by 100.0, and added to the weight of that drug, or addict, appearing, which are typically, but not necessarily rated at 0-1.0 by default (it varies). All weights are relative, so you have to know the weights for all the other items, which vary as the game progresses. So I absolutely sympathise with any confusion.

Being part puzzle game, I wanted to let the player figure stuff out. Being part simulation, there are parts that are modelled by complicated equations.

Hope this sheds some light. Thanks for playing.

Leaderboards | Talo - the open source game backend

Thank you, I keep forgetting to change the mouse cursor.
My original idea was something like Speedball, I don't know if you remember the game. In my limited memory (it was nearly 35 years ago) it was played on ice. By the time I drew frames for one player (a rugby player!) and a ref I hadn't figured out a mechanic, and gave up.
I'm relatively happy with how this turned out.

Are we naming names? I wasn't sure who one of your guys was, with light grey hair. There has been wall-art on reddit of red coats and other British politicians. Politicians tend to get overlooked by other countries, especially when retired. I don't watch TV so I couldn't even name 4 equivalent Brits, but you know, they say we prosecuted more than those famously litigious Americans did.

I copied my score, but screenshot overwrote it, 505, in case all 3 above me mess up :D

A British version would be rich pickings here.

Teaching is so stressful. Felt like I was back at school. I was about to call it impossible but I noticed you mentioning the whistle, 2 uses, right sounds powerful then. Indeed. Bought me quality time.

Quite the experience. The whistle sound was so fitting, like purpose made. I think you borrowed the sprites and classroom from somewhere, possibly LimeZu related but it must be paywalled because I can't find it. Don't know how much you drew yourself but I struggled reading some of the numbers, 8 vs 9 especially maybe also 6 vs 8. I think the lines could have been fainter.

Ah, the classic leftfield solution. I did notice that, but it felt like I'd be missing something better to the right.

I made it to what I think is the last level, without ever having to freeze more than 1 bird at a time.

Thereupon the game froze. I know we don't plan on having our games beaten, and I wouldn't have, without your help. Thanks, this is a really good game.

I got to the top of the screen but then I had no warning of where the next object would fall from and about 0% chance of hitting it in the right place when it did. Then when my empire melted, my ice gun stopped working.

I see that's intentional now. It didn't strike me as a puzzler. More a frantic platformer, but the distinction is arbitrary. Still, don't know what I'd do at the top next time.

I see in one of the screenshots you have 3 birds frozen. Can you give more of a hint on the second level, the one in the other screen, because I couldn't get my ducks in a row like you have in the one screenshot. Granted I'm rubbish at timing based platformers.

I feel there is a strong mechanic in here, it just needs revealing.

Thanks for playing. I left the IT industry  around the time of flash. I had PHP work to insulate me from it, but the pay was terrible. Congratulations on surviving it.

Masterpiece! Sometimes it is hard to know where a piece goes, but the game has so much going for it it is no bother using trial and error.

How to pick up food? I'm dieing here. Oh, scratch that, I placed first this time despite not seeing the boss duck, it took my "best score" (270k, 27k, I got half that in that run) which I'm nearly positive I didn't get in a single run. I wonder if that is actually my total score?

Fun game!

I ran around for a long while avoiding everything until I found (a) my whistle and (b) a chaingun.

When I restarted I found I already had a gun, but it probably makes me chill faster anyway as games felt shorter, or more fun. I fond some horizontal exits/entrances to not let me through. Maybe I wasn't jumping to the right height; it felt like a bug but I was freezing so can't be sure. I suppose you have several screens randomly arranged and supposed to all interconnect with minimal player jostling. Or you just arranged all the screens by hand and I found the invisible wall.

Anyway, great game. I'd like to think the power ups are meta-progression because I die soon after finding just one per game. 

Thanks for playing, I was inspired by Morvin the Cruel, a little too unironically it seems. It's just a game, they've all gone to the farm to have a nice lie down now ;)

To echo the last reviewer, I wish I was good at implementing chain mechanics. While not 100% novel each implementation feels like it. This was an optimal use of theme and special object, in turning the tables on that pesky RNG. Too much repetitive timing challenges for my tastes and abilities, but I'm proud to have tried the whistle, which was fun. That check point where I had to first use the whistle, I felt like Sisyphus as I kept falling off the staging island.

I think my game may be not quite right. There is no sound, and no speaker icon on the tab indicating there should be.

Cracking job on the graphics and shader.

I got 2 apples but it took a lot of time and reading comments to figure out how I should go about things. Still not really sure how I got through the barrel, button and door puzzle in purple, but I know it involved save games and an ostensibly useless but suspicious switch.

Very impressed to see a strategy game in a weekend jam as well executed as this. Under the lashings of visual polish it was kind of easy, and slow, I met my quota and maxed out the tech tree easily within 5 minutes. Then I'm sitting writing a comment and finding faults that would go unnoticed on a shorter playthrough. I don't know if I am using it wrong, but the whistle doesn't have much of an effect. I whistle over the one remaining food source, and they still ignore me. I wonder if it is instead a call to arms, or to guard the base.

I think I'd be asking too much for any new stuff after 5m. Inspiring gameplay, but the final 5 minutes were a bit meh.

It's fun and I'm really glad you posted an executable because when I read "first game" and "unity" I half expected some bloated monstrosity. This was pure game. Spot on graphics, sound and music. If you would hear my advice, it would to make environment interactions, like taking damage, more readable. I had my friend with me and I felt like I was about to walk right into a spike, but there was a dome between us, and hence distance, but I suddenly respawned, without my friend. Only ever got 1 friend showing even after the next was freed and I got a game over with like 2400. I found the coins (cookies?) spawned too close to the edge which meant certain damage.

Really loved the crisp graphics and solid physics. Hard to see your collaborators, the music was super chill, could you try a more legible font, or hyperlinks?

IKR? Sadly can't use it in time this time, but grabbing it before it's paywalled! Thanks sophi.

Are you sure you reviewed the right game? What about it is weird and sarcastic?

Very impressive 3D for a 72 hour jam. Not just technically, but visually too. I'm genuinely impressed by how you got smoothly curved and inclined roads in in time. The scenerey I presume are stock assets, and I guess you had tools for the level/road design.

freestylized.com is such a rabbit hole of new assets I must learn before attempting 3D again. Thanks.

I like the humor that went into the limitation here.

Thanks for playing.

I just double checked the latest build and you pay out 30% of the contract payment at the start of the level, so only stand to make 70% of it on success. On failure, you lose 80%. So the cost of an incorrect guess is 110%, but that assumes you keep 100% of a correct guess, when it is only 70%. So an incorrect guess costs 157% of what a correct one rewards you.

I should say more about the perks. Seeing the DNA bases through the back of the card is the most fun, it's almost essential. The canine one is revealed by your first flip showing a popup number, with the direction the dogs searched in, left of it. I feel that information should be less fleeting, and better animated. Perks definitely need attention, I mean you can view it all you want before purchasing, and the effects, to me at least, are obvious. Perhaps I will add a glossary illustrating their effects.

Flip a one sample (left) and one reference material (right) over. If they match, you've found horse DNA in the pate. 1 match might not be enough. At the top of the screen is your "burden of proof". You need that many matches to be sure the horse DNA is substantive.

Is there a part of this that doesn't make sense?

tldr; match pairs

Is there a game in here somewhere? I just got an anime carousel and some music.

What are the controls?

Unique take on the limitation. Having just played it I would have thought the limitation was not met; but am satisfied having read the explanation here. I was happy using just the one hand but then I'd start shooting again, which felt inefficient through the blocky explosions and lack of contrast. Nice variety of weapons for a mini jam.

It's a good looking game but I am not sure I fully understand the objective. It's survival, but that means mostly doing nothing. The level is procedurally generated and changes when you are not there so any mental mapping feels unrewarding. The human gets me, it seems they are the only creatures with agency here, and they zoom straight to the weeds I am hiding behind.

Nice twist having to escort the 3 young-uns around. That has potential here I probably haven't exploited yet. Solid controls.

Amazing void, I mean voice acting, and dialogue. Don't know much about in-car AC, but I felt I was a fool to try to fix it. Literally my first dialog and I fell through the floor. The car was weird at low speed, but good in the goldilocks zone.

Nice cards and gameplay. How is "kick" a defense for birds though? Have you ever seen bird legs?

So professional all-round. I particularly liked the special object implementation and graphics; so much detail! The epitome of belts.

I had to finish to see just how extensive this masterpiece is. As we're all devs here I really enjoyed the gallery section.

Entertaining game, effects, and music. Solid, readable, retro graphics with an attractive palette.

Appreciate the tutorials, they were well designed, but fast twitch precision games can feel a bit like PE to me when trying to teach new mechanics. OTOH I always appreciate new mechanics like the legs here. I'd say the keys really were the best choice. Employs both hands without needing that useless pointing rodent.

Took me ages to figure out what the first key you were pointing at was, I guess that's internationalization proof?

Thanks for playing.

Can confirm, I have now completed it and this is what the game looks like. I simply didn't have time for a more polished end game. I believe your's only prints "Winner" to the screen, so please don't be too harsh with me for that.

I always do tutorials, but not here, because I invested so much time into tooltips. Granted the rules book was dumbed down to 1 page, but I've updated the itch page, after realising I had to upload images there and any pasted in were for my eyes only. One such image being the damage matrix. A particularly large graphic to devote game-screen-estate to.

The "map" (you are too kind, more a last minute progression tree) I cooked up in a day or something whereas the main game screen, I spent ages on. The "map" is indeed terrible, but since you finished it I would say functional :)

Nice game loop, visuals and music. Perfect harmony by all creative talent involved. Just getting a game off the ground in this time frame is challenging, so bringing it all together like this is harder than it looks.

Of course. There are tooltips all over the game. I spent days trying to do this and obviously have failed. So I update the web page as if anyone even reads it.

You have to play it a bit to see the illusory opponents; unless they were that convincing!

Mesmerising graphics. Games this good dissuade me from entering 72hr jams.