If anyone's following along here, this was added: https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/pull/611

One of the big things I miss from coding games in LÖVE is the ability to interact with my games while they're running. It's invaluable for debugging to be able to just pause the game and inspect and change the contents of various game state tables.

Imagine if when you press ESC to get to the console you could run a command like `lua print(state.abc)` to see the contents of a game's table, or run `lua state.abc = 481` and then run `lua TIC()` to see the effect your change has on gameplay. (If we want to get really fancy we could add a `resume` command, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.)

First of all, is this a good idea? I understand that having support for multiple languages complicates this. I could take a shot at implementing this for the languages that run on the Lua runtime (including MoonScript and Fennel) but implementing it for JS or Wren is beyond me. If it's agreed to be a thing worth doing I'd be happy to put in the work to see it since interactive development is very important to me, and it's difficult for me to work without it since I've been so spoiled.

Part 2 is up now!

Let's just say it was a week where I had a lot of free time! Business trip took me out of town so I had each night alone in a hotel room with nothing to do but jam. The music and art are both Creative Commons-licensed works I found on https://opengameart.org which is a wonderful resource!

This is a lot more fun than it looks like at first glance! It would help a lot if the instructions were visible from within the game, and maybe if there were a way to write notes within the game as well. But I enjoyed it once I got over the confusion; quite a good brain teaser.

Thanks! Rover markers are coming in version 2.

Hey folks; I wrote up a little post-jam devlog. This is just part 1; hope to follow it up in a few days.

https://technomancy.us/187

My kids loved this one; eventually they got to the point where they just tried to see how long they could play without getting any cheese at all.

Great work on the graphics; really nailed the pixel-art vibe!

The frog guy is hilarious; love the voice-overs. The controls were pretty frustrating, they responded sluggishly, and I never did figure out how to talk to any of the characters the frog tells you to talk to.

Neat idea and execution. Makes me want to go and read thru the devlog!

I also had to patch it a bit to get it working in the latest version of LOVE; since the Linux version doesn't bundle the framework you might want to offer a download that's compatible with 11.1:  https://p.hagelb.org/gravity-falls-love-11.love

Thanks for the feedback. I tried to give the text a translucent background to make it more readable but didn't make it in time for the jam, so I will add that in after the jam rating period is finished.

In the mean time, all the controls are described in white text on a black background on the pause screen, so you can see how things work by pressing escape.

This is a lot more fun than it looks! Edit: my kids won't stop playing it; halp.

Nice job. I recognize some of those planet sprites from a game I made a few years ago.

I had a bit of a hard time understanding how changing the positioning would affect the path of the ship, but with some practice you get the hang of it. You might consider re-wording the instructions; it wasn't clear that "mouse" meant "drag the mouse on the planets" at first glance.

Nice job on the art; I enjoyed that aspect of it the most.

What a blast! This was my first jam, and I was really happy to have a full ten days, because trying to finish in 3 would have been rough on my health.

Worst moment: getting all the coding complete and realizing I have no idea what I'm going to do for level design. By that point I was down to two days left, but I knew I had been heads-down in the game so long that I could no longer be relied upon to determine what is or isn't fun.

Best moment: I spent most of the jam on a business trip (had a lot of solo nights at the hotel for hack time which worked out really well) but once I got back home and got to show my game to my kids, they were able to playtest, spot bugs, and even help with level design a fair bit. Using Tiled for the levels made it really easy for them to pitch in. Their enthusiasm helped push me over the line to finish (just barely) in time.

Got most of my engine done; most of what remains is prose writing and level design.

Really happy with how it's coming together so far!

Hey folks; I spent some time creating a makefile for creating love2d distributables: this supports creating portable .love files and also .zip files for Windows and Mac OS which bundle the love2d framework in them; might be useful for anyone else targeting the love2d framework from Fennel, Urn, or some other lisp on that runtime:

https://gitlab.com/technomancy/exo-encounter-667/blob/master/makefile

It also runs the luacheck linter, which is actually surprisingly useful on the output of the Fennel compiler.

Just the intro screen for now, but it's a nice one if I may say so myself.

edit: this has been fixed

Thanks for the feedback! The console login behavior should be clearer in the next beta, and I'll add an "ls" function; that would help a lot. I also agree that the interface when you press ctrl-o could be a lot nicer--I hope to address that in a future release too.

Thanks for being understanding that the game is still in beta.

Thanks for your interest! Just published an alpha release with downloads for Windows/Mac/Linux; please let me know if you get a chance to try it out.