Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

The Magical Ma

51
Posts
9
Followers
1
Following
A member registered Aug 17, 2023 · View creator page →

Creator of

Recent community posts

Lol this is great. I really love silly themes like this, and it has sufficiently traumatized me such that I don't know if I'll ever be able to look at bread the same way again. I will say that I found the "plate" description for on play effect a bit confusing. Seeing as in my mind I'm already plating every ingredient. Maybe if the one word description were something like "choice" idk.

But yeah I love the chaos of this game, and the intense debates I end up having in my mind between plating and risking it for the biscuit. So far the highest shift I made it to is 4. I notice my impulsiveness tends to be the death of me.

Yippee! I'm glad you were able to experience the pathfinder without too much trouble, and that the screen reader somehow worked (mostly) for Mac OS!

Thanks for playing my demo! And thanks for bringing attention to the pathfinder getting stuck on tables and such. I have no clue about why NVDA isn't working too well in some situations. It's quite unfortunate, but I plan on remaking these systems in a more sensible way now that I know more of what I am doing with the screen reader (kinda-ish). The plan is for this game to be done in a month or two from now, so we'll see how that goes. :)

Did you use the pathfinder? I understand it is a bit broad in it's scope but that was the intended way that a blind person would move around.

If there is one thing I've learned, it's that volume is weirrrdddd.

(1 edit)

Gosh it's so irritating watching this 'cause it's like... WHY ARE THE NAMES FOR THE ENTITIES WHEN YOU APPROACH THEM NOT PLAYING?!!?!??!?!?! WHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!

I spend so much time on the screen reader only for it to just decide it doesn't want to read things sometimes. It's a very toxic relationship we have.

(2 edits)

Also watching more of the vod (I'm typing these as I watch so I don't forget). The pathfinder menu visuals assumes that you can't see. You CAN pathfind to everything in the plaza, it's just that the tabs go "offscreen". The reason the order changes depending on where you are in the town is that it orders the entities based on closest to farthest.

In any given "screen" every single thing that can be interacted (including doors and exits) with can be pathfinded to. Again it's just that most of the tabs go offscreen.

(5 edits)

Oh cool thanks! Part of me wonders if the screen reader not reader some stuff is due to the fact that giving the game any input while it is reading will stop it. However it is interesting that the indicator of how many people you've found doesn't read a loud though. That's weird.  It's also interesting because on my end being in range to interact with an entity does have the screen reader read their name. Honestly at this point I might just have a tts screen reader with all the fun settings because honestly trying to incorporate this darn thing is driving me madddd.

And I also see what you mean about the music glitching now! That's just good ol' lag that came from my inefficient programming I'm assuming! Also the fact that you were streaming probably made the lag a bit more extreme which is annoying... I gotta figure out how to make these things nicer and simpler.

Oh my god this game is so fun. I love the puzzle-y nature that comes from figuring out how to best set the rooms. I've literally been playing this for an hour but have to stop because I do want to check out other games. I did finally get to the manticore but wasn't able to to run away successfully. I'm guessing I'll need all of the spirits for that. I don't have any feedback in terms of accessibility because I didn't play not looking at the game, but in terms of non-accessibility I don't really have much feedback besides that the voices should be a LOT louder by default. Oh also if there was a key you could press so that you snap to the next room that'd be cool to speed things up.

The music was just sooooo beautiful. I can't understate how much of a joy it was to travel across the rooms just to hear the different patches of music. It made exploring feel... Quite honestly worth it. I want to eat the music.

What qualifies as a room that requires a key and a room that doesn't? Is it just anything in the right half of the map?

Awww! Thank you for your such incredibly kind words! 

And all the feedback is super helpful! Everything you said makes sense are things that I can implement. I really do want to add more emission sounds or even having a dynamic soundtrack for the different sections of town. The emission sounds would probably be simpler at this point. The big town screen is definitely the most difficult to think about making accessible because there is so much going on. I figured that for now if something didn't have a functional purpose I wouldn't have a tab allowing you to path find to it, but I know that this isn't the most fun in terms of actually exploration. I could see your idea the tabs being sections of town and the buttons being the different things you could pathfind to though. Originally the tabs were meant to have more buttons like "describe" or something but yeah... Thinking about it more your suggestion makes more sense.

I am curious to hear what you mean about the screen reader being very buggy. What aspects of it were buggy? (I am aware though of how the music being buggy... Didn't loop it quite right. Whoops!) Some of the buggy-ness might come from the intentional things I did because I didn't know how a screen reader was supposed to read things exactly. (For example anything read by the reader will be followed by the type of thing is. Whether it be a textbox, audio description, menu info, tab, or button)

Anyways, I was surprised to hear that you enjoyed the audio descriptions as I was struggling a lot to get them out in the last couple hours. I find the one for the bar particularly funny because I mean... You can just tell it was the last one I wrote for the night. I wanted to add descriptions for the character's appearances too but ran out of time (and sanity). Definitely wanna go back and touch them all up with the things I've learned.

Valencia Tales: Strings & Stone so yum yum I could eat it in my tum tum. (I really enjoyed it)

Ah I see. Just wanted to be sure.

I see. That makes a lot of sense! Thanks for the feedback

Oh and I also forgot, I believe you use Mac which means that you aren't getting the screen reader support, which is a big part in making the town accessible.  If this was the main issue please let me know.

I loved the grandpa and his voice acting, for the most part the voice was pretty solid! I also loved his dialogue and the way he talked about the village. It was kind of surprising honestly. I was expecting a fast paced chaotic game where you hunt sea monsters as an old man, so it was very interesting to see that it was more of a casual conversation. Basically having a fishing trip with your grandpa except your hunting sea monsters. I do agree that the game play feels a bit slower than it should be though. The fact that you hear the monster and you have to wait until the entire sound plays to actually fire is a little frustrating. I honestly think I'd prefer it if you could fire each weapon at a whim.

Personally I think it'd be really funny if the monsters picked up in numbers really quickly, so you have to run all over shooting monsters, and the grandpa is just kinda rambling about his story as he is already used to this kinda thing. I understand completely though if that isn't the vibe. All in all this entry brought a big smile to my face. 



(3 edits)

Do you have any idea of what could've caused that glitch? It's fine if you only have a vague idea or don't know.

To be completely honest I don't really know how to make navigating the town accessible. Do you have any suggestions? One of my ideas was to play sounds unique to each house when the player is near them. (Like for example drinks clanking at the bar or something). Another idea was to have a dynamic soundtrack where the song would change a little depending on where you were in the town.

Quite frankly this looks amazing!

I can't move...

I'm so glad you enjoyed the secret ending that totally exists. I was starting to think that nobody would ever find it!

I enjoy this game! I love the art style a lot. The saturated color palette feels very comforting somehow. The dog bugging out also weirdly adds to the experience for me. It's like, "Oh there goes my ol' pup again, do his up right up right dance". I also really like the music. It's super calming. The only two things for me with this game are as follows:

1. The leaves are sometimes in places that I and the dog can't reach

2. The walking sound clashes with the music. I would strongly suggest either not having a walking sound or having a sound that has no discernible tone.

I was also unclear if there was an ending or it just went on forever. Again, a leaf spawned off screen so the dog just kept running into the tree and I just stood there.

Really great vibes though. I do love this a lot. Even just having a dog is great.

Always nice to see peoples first games! This is pretty impressive. I actually do like the idea of angling the rake instead of just pressing a button to sweep. A suggestion I have is making it so you can control everything with a mouse. (My suggestion for this is to rotate with left and right click and have it always sweep instead of there being a button for it but that might not be best idk)

I loved the reveal of the pumpkins being above you. Unironically it felt like a plot twist.

Very very pretty game. Everything is so detailed and collecting the pollen feels very nice. The controls are also pretty intuitive! I will say that I had trouble noticing that the leaves slowed me down, but that's really my only issue. Nice game!

(1 edit)

The music is very good in this! The idea of fishing up the currency is pretty neat, although I think it would be cool if the leaves had a bit more of a visual indication of where they are pulling. I will also say that the enemy hit boxes are a bit big. It is always better in my opinion to make the enemy hit boxes within the sprite rather than completely encompassing it. Otherwise it feels like you collided with nothing.

The items are cool though. I didn't play enough to see the ???, but I liked the rake and stuff.

(3 edits)

I really like the music in this game, and the animation of the character is super smooth. The font feels a little bit too wacky considering the fact that there isn't really a single lighthearted moment in the story. Controlling the character and catching the apples is very smooth and fun! I like how the basket actually visibly grows in it's apple count. One thing that's weird to me though is that the apples seem to fall at random time intervals. One that grew instantly and one that has been ripe for a few seconds both fall at the same time. That feels a little unintuitive when trying to plan out how to move to maximize your apple count.

All in all this game is really fun and solid!

I really love the art and music in this game. It is so cool how the jingles for the different bugs actually good nicely when played on top of each other when you collect multiple of them. That's really cool! It's also really cozy lol.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Okay I'll try that lol

Very cute graphics! Very nice sound design. The atmosphere is great in this game.

This is something that I recommend for any platformer, but you should allow the player a good few frames even after they are considered not grounded to allow them to jump. It makes things feel more fair.

This is really impressive given that it's your first game! Good job! 

So silly so billy

Great game! Really loved the mechanics. I kinda agree that the time limits make it less cozy which is bad for the jam, but great for me because I love time limits lol. I had a lot of fun with this and the intro was great. 


In the level with two knives there was this weird bug I think where I couldn't pick up the sickle to the right no matter how hard I ran into it.

I really like how the loading screens are life tips instead of game tips. It's a really nice use of that for story telling purposes!

Honestly this is peak I have no notes. This is a small detail but I really like how the camera angle blocks Reed until you step out a little bit. It's almost like a sudden shock/realization about how much time went by.

(2 edits)

Really pretty game! I don't know if this is delta-time issue or just a me issue but the barrels fall sooo slowly and it's really hard for me to even get a single point. I have a potato computer :/


EDIT: This is probably a me issue because I even set the quality to low and increased the framerate and the barrels still fell super slow. I wish the barrels were more fast when you dropped them so it could be more reaction time based rather than trying to guess where they will be...

EDIT EDIT: Also the music is really good.

Loved the paper made aesthetic! I think it's neat that the witch has a different visual style than literally everything else in the game. It gives her a sinister aura despite knowing nothing about her. The music is also really great although I wished it looped more smoothly.

Timmy is so cute! I have to wonder why he has tears in his eyes. Is he sad but trying to smile through the pain? Is he so happy that he can't help but cry? Is there something more complex happening here? It's great.

It would be cool if there was more story/thoughts/dialogue in the game. This world intrigues me and is fun to move around in! I want to know more about it.

We the people

This game is not cozy in the slightest...

... But I loved this game to pieces. I had a big smile on my face the entire time. The chaos of everything is so funny to me, and despite the actual sprites being kinda meh, the way that they are animated is super fun and incredibly charming. I love how all of the ducks will display around you one by one in the game over screen. I also love how most of the ducks just use rockets as an attack. It all just adds to create a "WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?!" sort of vibe.

If there is one cozy thing about this game it would be the music. I really like it! It's a great contrast to everything else going on, making it that much funnier.

(This next section is going to be a lot of criticism, and I just want to be super clear: I love this game and it's concept to pieces. The reason I have so much to say about it is precisely because I enjoyed it so much.)

Now the enemies... They are super fast, precise, are bulky as heck, and grow in numbers at insane speeds. While I enjoy them growing super quickly in numbers, their other attributes are a little bit more annoying than chaotic. Because they have so much health, it feels as if my ducklings are doing nothing against them. When playing this game I went all in on the soda because that was the strategy that gave me the most obvious success. While upgrading the attacks might've helped, the fact that I never even saw a enemy die made me not even really consider the viability of attacking.

There are multiple ways I would fix that. (Obviously these are just random ideas): 

- Add randomness to the angle the projectiles

- Slow down the enemies

- Give the enemies more predictable AI (Ex. Walk up to the player, do a little wiggle animation, jump, wait a few seconds, continue)

- Lower health (If you do anything I would strongly suggest doing this). I'm fairly certain you could make the snowflakes die in one hit and the game would still maintain a feeling of chaos.

Then there is the gambling. It's a super funny concept. I really love the slot machine aesthetic with the sounds and all. Problem is it feels more like getting an item in Mario Kart than it does like gambling. While you do pay your currency to activate the slots, I feel like there is more that could be done in order to really sell the gambling effect. Here are some ideas in that regard:

- It'd be so funny if whenever you interact with a bush, instead of rolling for a duck, you play a casino-type mini-game although I don't know fully how that would work.

- You could be able to bet more money to have a higher change of getting a good duck?

- Make the bushes have literal slot machines baked into them

- Have a walking bass while the you roll

- Have the strip that the ducks are on be an alternating red and black pattern rather than green.

I think that's all I really have to say? I hope I made sense. I am pretty tired so sorry if anything I say doesn't make much sense. But if I haven't made it clear enough already, this game is peak lol.

(3 edits)

Peak. I have no notes.


Despite it's simplicity, the presentation in this game is amazing. This game is also super polished! I love listening to the music and all of the sounds when jumping around (especially the mushroom bounce). Every second of playing it is like candy. The way that mechanics are introduced throughout the levels, and then level 4 combines all of them is also very smooth and feels very well thought out.


The ending is amazing, I love all the cat pots jumping around in the heart shape it's just like.... It's all so polished and cute and great!

I REALLY loved the song for this game! Combined with the peak dialogue from the ghost, I really enjoyed it. I love the ghost that doesn't even remember who she is or how she died.

I LOVE THE SOUND EFFECT FOR BUMPING INTO THE TREES. I also really love the art style in general. I don't think I can overstate just how good it is. I also really like driving around to different people in the car. I think the game play got a little bit stale for me near the end, as nothing really changes about the game-play as you progress. If you want to work on this after the jam, I'd suggest making it so that each food item has their own little "mini-game" in order to cook it, rather than collecting the ingredients around the map. Or you could have both at the same time, idk.


But yeah, this is an all around solid submission that made me smile!

Very silly game! I loved it a lot! I honestly don't really have any notes. Just a good game.

Really loved the music a lot. Got stuck on the first puzzle in the screenshot though... I got through the door, walked back, and then the door wouldn't unlock for me again after I solved the puzzle again.