itch.io

wish i had gotten to this one before the end of voting! great little game! your ratings are way lower than they should be even without the score adjustment.

• i really love the mechanic of having to collect pieces of gold to open doors and such. i’m greedy though and wish there was a box or something on the other side that i could replace on the switch to take the bag of gold haha! i guess if that was the case, Fat Cat would be really heavy by the end of a level.
• really nice level. would love to play more!
• the controls feel really nice. i was thinking the player could use just a little more height on the jump. i got hung up ledges a few times because i let go of the jump button just a bit too early, but actually it may have been that i was carrying more gold. that is also a cool mechanic. i could see that being used in puzzles if you were to add more levels.
• music and sounds definitely would add a lot to the game, but it’s really charming and fun as is. it’s a shame you all didn’t have a sound person. there were a bunch looking for teams this year.
• the graphics are fantastic! you’ve got some anti-aliasing on some of the text that breaks the 4-color rule. look into removing that so you don’t repeat it next year. hope you all will participate in the jam again!

thanks again! i did not expect this to be addressed so quickly!

Yes, you assumed correctly. I did a little testing and that was my hunch, but wasn’t certain. It does seem like their votes should not count. otherwise it would be an easy avenue for vote manipulation. Thank you for the speedy response!

Can users with disqualified games jam entries still rate other games in the jam? Do their previous ratings still count? There doesn’t seem to be anything in the jam docs about this.

really interesting aesthetic! i have a bunch of feedback and small nitpicks that i hope you will find helpful:

• i really love the music! that’s to be expected though!❤️ it’s also minimal but has a really cool kind of glitchiness almost that fits the game well.
• very cool use of minimal graphics. i like the way you’ve used the blue to highlight enemies, but the red and brown colors don’t have much contrast to me. if you didn’t have the black details i would have had a hard time seeing the barriers. i think shifting the brown to something more different from the red would make those easier to see. as an example:
  
• the upgrade screen is nicely organized, but a bit hard to parse. the icons aren’t totally unclear, but words would really help to clarify what each upgrade is. also i’m confused by the sort of equation at the bottom that says (5 - 15) + 1.
• the gameplay feels kind of slow, and i’m not great with tank controls so i struggled a little to get a feel for it. it kept hitting the wrong buttons, so i would fire instead of rotating my turret. i sort of got the hang of it after a couple tries though.
• shifting was a bit confusing too. i never learned to drive a manual transmission so maybe that could be part of it lol. i think i managed to figure it out, but i didn’t notice a big difference from 1st and 2nd gear.
• one hit from enemies felt a bit harsh. i’m not sure if one of the upgrades allows you to take more hits but that would be nice. i only got through a few screens because of that.
• i really like the gameplay implications of having to wait for the gold to “mature” to be more valuable but risk losing it by waiting or taking too long to get it to. however, i think the indication of when the gold was old and when it was about to disappear could have been more clear. i often missed gold because of this.
• i got stuck for a bit on a barrier here (position highlighted in yellow in the screenshot) and i’m not totally sure why. it looked like i should have been able to squeeze around it but i stopped moving for a second and then slowly moved along. missed some old gold because of it.
  
• related to the previous point, it isn’t totally clear which barriers can be moved over and projectiles can pass through and which can’t.

it was pretty fun once i got the hang of it, even if i didn’t get too far into it. nice job!

no worries! that is the way jams go, you never have enough time! you did a great job! i hope that my feedback will help you to improve the game if you are interested in working on it further.

simple and fun little game! i have pretty much the same feedback as others:

• it would be good to have the difficulty ramp up a bit more and have the items drop faster over time.
• graphics and music are not bad. everything looks nice and clean and reads very well. music gets a bit repetitive after playing for a while so the mute option was a nice touch.
• the interpretation of the theme seems pretty loose to me, and a snowman pirate is an interesting choice! it’s definitely a unique take on the theme!

thanks for playing!

thank you! glad you enjoyed it.

yeah, i think it’s just the text that’s adding the extra colors on the end screen. GameMaker is great! we use that too. i’m glad you’re having an easier time with it! best of luck with your future projects!

ah. yeah, they don’t go to the idle animation when they stop moving momentarily. the walk animation is always playing unless they dig. there’s a death animation too but it plays so fast you can barely see it.

all good points! thanks for the feedback! i’m curious what you don’t like about the knight’s walk animation.

pretty fun little game actually! nice work!

• the recording mechanic is pretty cool, and not one that i’ve seen in many other games. it’s similar to Braid, but because of the way the character controls, the game has a very different feel.
• a lot of the levels were fairly simple to beat. i didn’t even need to use the recording mechanic on several of them. the last one was pretty tricky though!
• the random enemies flying across the screen on occasion was pretty funny, but also a little frustrating.
• the graphics and music are simple, but effective.
• the narration between levels does mention gold and ancient things, but the theme doesn’t seem very present in the game. it feels like you made a game and then added in references to the theme after the fact.

yeah, we ended up having very little time to playtest and fix the softlock issue, unfortunately. we already have a plan to fix that and should be putting out an update at some point post-jam. thanks so much for playing and the kind words!

in response to some things mentioned in your playthrough:

• i’m not sure why the purples on the page look different for you. they’re the same in my browser.
  
• lol the controls also weren’t my decision. i would have asked to add WASD + JK as well if we had more time. arrow keys + ZX are pretty common controls though. :)
• hopefully we’ll fix the bug where you get stuck on the rocks sometimes. i’ve noticed if you move in the direction away from them you can usually get free.
• i also didn’t notice our game description was just “GBJam 14” lol. thanks for pointing that out. i gave it something a bit better!
• the game is pretty similar to Dig Dug!

• i love the idea of roaring to lure the knights! we were planning to just have them chase the dragon when close enough, but maybe we’ll do that instead? i think the knight movement is pretty random and needs a little more work.
• i’m hoping we can fix the level generation bugs as well.
• good eye on the dragon’s walk animation! i was surprised that no one else had mentioned that yet because (as the artist) i noticed it right after the deadline passed. i think the animation frame order got mixed up or something? i’m not actually sure. Macrow was unable to work on the game until the final day, so we didn’t have time to really do any QA checks lol. this is also the reason for the other quirks you mentioned, but i think he did an amazing job in such a short amount of time!

thanks so much for playing and the in depth feedback! i’m going to check out your playthrough now. ❤️

this is a good first game! i can tell you put a lot of effort into it.

some notes on the jam restrictions to keep in mind for future GBJams:

• you should not have mouse input anywhere in the game, even the main menu. otherwise, the controls match the jam restrictions.
• you mostly stuck to the 4 color rule, but there are some extra colors around the edge of the screen that you missed and your dialogue box also doesn’t match the palette. you can see from this screenshot where i have removed the text in Aseprite. there are six colors (check out the palette swatch squares in the upper left corner of the image).
• your font adds yet another color (white) and the anti-aliasing adds hundreds of extra grays around the edges of the letters to make them look smoother. these all count as colors.
• your resolution also isn’t actually 160x144 because your fonts are at a much higher resolution. the ending screen looks to be about 640x600 base resolution and actually has hundreds of colors in it.

other thoughts:

• it doesn’t make much sense to have a choice to go to sleep at the bed since there is nothing else to do. maybe you had planned for more though?
• the different music in the second dream really helps to add to the nightmare feel. nice job on that!
• the ending seems abrupt and doesn’t conclude the story in my opinion. it would have been nice to add some kind of narration there or something. i feel like some kind of narration between the two dreams would help too. why does the character have a nightmare? what changed that might have caused that?
• it would be cool if there was a way to avoid or defeat the creature at the end of the second dream and have a different ending. maybe you intended to do something like that but ran out of time?

nice work on this though. i hope you keep making games and you join the jam again next year!

super cute little game! i really love the kobold and dragon sprites. really simple but fun gameplay too! the comments from the dragon are a really nice touch and made me laugh. i think i would have just had a “good” and “bad” sound effect and not thought to have word balloons. i really like your interpretation of the theme too. i would have never thought to make a dragon treasure sorting game even though my game also involves a dragon and treasure.

some thoughts/small nitpicks:

• it took me a little bit to figure out the rules because i immediately moved to pick up treasure and they disappeared. it wasn’t totally intuitive to me that i needed to move back over near the dragon’s head to see them again. i think it would have been better to just make that always visible rather than hiding it (our game suffers from a similar issue with the HUD actually lol).
• i feel like sometimes i got roasted for not doing anything. i guess maybe i took too long? i did notice the dragon starts to look angry and says “quick” but it felt like there wasn’t much warning before he breathed fire. i wonder if more feedback on that could help. maybe some screenshake or a little smoke coming out of his nose could help to warn the player. actually, because i’m not generally looking at the dragon most of the time, a sound effect might be best to signal to the player that it’s getting impatient.
• i would like the kobold to move just a little faster. it felt like just moving back and forth took too long. it did add a lot of tension when i feel like he’s moving really slow and the dragon is yelling to speed up!
• picking up a specific item was pretty tricky when they start stacking up on each other. i guess this is part of the game’s design though, so despite being frustrating to me as a player it makes sense.
• the music is nice and catchy but gets a little repetitive. another possibility to give the player more feedback on how they’re doing would be to have a subtle shift in the music each time they lose a heart. so it could get a little angrier and less happy sounding. i’m not much of a musician, so i don’t know how i’d go about doing that but it could be cool lol.

really nice game. well done!

huh. it said it was empty when i looked at it.

did the exe run for you? the previous comment said that it didn’t work.

pretty cool game!

• the graphics are decent. there seems to be a bit of a style difference from the title screen and the rest of the gameplay art. glad you were able to fix the transparency issue you had on the menus and get everything within the 4 color limit!
• i like the music. the title screen song is my favorite. the gameplay music is good too, but starts to get repetitive after a short time.
• like how picking up more gold makes you move slower. reminds me a bit of Dome Keeper in that regard. the digging and way you have the NPCs setup reminds me of Steamworld Dig. if you haven’t played those games, they are good ones to check out!
• it took a little bit for me to figure out how digging works and what the UI at the top of the screen was telling me. i died a lot at first. then i started to draw the connection between when the bars and why the level would collapse. i probably should have read the screen better before digging lol!
• i’m still not sure how bracers help and where i can and can’t place them. it seems like they can only be placed on an edge tile, and i assume they help keep the stability up, but it’s hard to tell if they’re really making any difference. maybe some more feedback would be helpful for that. maybe they could add a bar to the stability meter?
• it seems like the more expensive dig sites aren’t even worth it. they don’t allow you to dig very deep before they start collapsing. i just stuck to the second one mostly and would get a few hundred gold and come up when the stability meter was down to 1 bar.
• i don’t really know what the different is between the different tile types, but some seem to be more likely to have gold and others seem to cause collapses quicker.
• the canary didn’t seem to help any, and i’m not sure what the “plank cap” upgrade did.
• it’s a bit weird that you have a “leave” option in the menus, but selecting it does nothing. instead you have the X actually exit the menus.
• i was able to pay off my debts though, so now i’m free!!!

i hope this is helpful feedback. nice job on the game!

nice looking game and it plays well!

• the sprites and animations are pretty cool. i like how the enemies drop gold pieces and you have to collect them. it was a little frustrating when they fell into spike pits though.
• it would be nice to have some sound effects and music. there were a lot of musicians looking for teams this year, so i’m surprised you couldn’t find anyone to help out with that.
• nice tutorial area. the one other thing that could have been added in there was that you need to jump to go into a door, but it didn’t take much to figure that out.
• found myself holding the run button 90% of the time. i think it might be good to just making running the default and maybe have walking tied to a button instead. or maybe walking isn’t even needed?
• i also thought the secret passage in the pit was a neat addition. it seemed like the game froze for a few seconds after that happened so it might be good to speed that up if possible or show some kind of visual of the tunnel clearing while the player waits. i think more areas where you can dig would be a cool addition to the game also. either for more secret things or it could possibly a way to gate progression to make it sort of a metroidvania– like you need to get a certain type of weapon to dig through some rocks or whatever.
• i finally got up to this area (that previous jump is tricky to land), but couldn’t figure out how i’m supposed to reach that higher platform. my guess is the hidden relic is up there, but it doesn’t seem like the player can jump that high.
  

pretty solid first game though! i can see potential for more levels and mechanics with the tent/shop area. nice job!

i played this before the jam ended and almost forgot to come back to give you a rating! pretty fun game despite some bugs.

• your art is pretty nice! everything is recognizable. the music is pretty cool too, but it’s a bit quiet compared to the sound effects. did you do everything yourself on the game?
• the tutorial isn’t very helpful. the controls were a little weird and i wasn’t sure what to do at first, but eventually i figured it out… i think.
• as i suggested before, some slashing animations for your weapon would really help give the player more feedback on if they’re able to hit an enemy.
• also as suggested before, a GAME OVER text at the end would really help the player know what happened as well. but you probably didn’t have time to get those things in before the jam ended.
• your controls could have been better configured to emulate a Game Boy game. i think usually the A button would for attack and it would have been better to have 1 button (B) cycle through your items instead of having two buttons for that.
• i had a bit of an issue when portals appeared to the shop area. usually i was in the middle of spamming the attack button, so i’d enter the portal and then exit it immediately and not be able to go to the shop. to resolve this issue, it might be a good idea to make the player press another button besides attack to enter the portal or have it spawn a little away from where the player is when they unlock it. it also wasn’t clear what caused the portal to open either. did i have to dig up a certain number of treasures chests?

despite a few bugs and being a little unclear on the gameplay, the game is pretty fun and i can see where it could go as a fully realized game. nice job!

i have no idea what is happening in this game, but it is very pretty. 😀

graphics are pretty nice, and the music is cool and kind of catchy! i like how you stacked the different parts to indicate the metal detector finding treasure. problem is, X didn’t seem to do anything! pretty disappointed i couldn’t dig anything up. :(
btw, your cover image should be made by you during the jam as well, but i won’t take points off for it.

lovely artwork! the concept sounds really cool too. it’s a shame you didn’t turn it into a game! i’d love to play it.

btw your art definitely has a Game Boy vibe to it, but i noticed if you look closely there are some extra colors in most of the shots. it helps to use the “indexed color” setting in Aseprite or whatever software you use for art to make sure you don’t accidentally get slightly different colors outside of your palette. so keep that in mind! hope you will return and get a full game done next year!

While I’m sure you put a lot of effort into your game, we unfortunately have to disqualify it. If it were just a small issue that you missed we could overlook it but your game breaks several of the core rules of the jam.

• Not the correct resolution. From the description on your page, it seems like you tried to set the resolution to 160x144, but it was not successful. 480x360 is not the same ratio, and about 3x larger than the Game Boy resolution. Your game should use pixel art. Vector images do not translate well to such a low resolution.
• More than 4 colors. You can see this in the screenshots. Even without including all of the colors from anti-aliasing, you have about 10 distinct colors in the last image.
• Used assets for music. Everything in your game except for fonts should be made by you during the jam.
• Mouse input. There should be no mouse input in your game, but you have to click a button to start playing.

I hope that this feedback is helpful and you can look into these issues and join us again next year!

thank you! and thanks for pointing out those issues!

that’s the challenge! but yeah, sometimes you don’t get enough fire. we need to fix that. thanks for playing!

of course, if i read instead of playing around with the comparison thingie, i would see that they even point this out.

and i can see how it would be better for video

i didn’t know there were different algorithms for dithering. this is interesting. i looked at them all and honestly, i don’t think blue noise looks that good. i prefer the Atkinson, Floyd-Steinberg, and a few others over blue noise. Bayer definitely looks the worst though.

personally, i avoid using dithering in general as it creates a lot of noise, but with a 4 color palette it is a useful tool. i prefer to do it by hand though. you can speed things up by copy/pasting areas, but to do a complex gradient it’s definitely a lot of tedious work. sometimes i like that though.

your game was disqualified. no one can rate it.

cool! i hope you all keep working on it.
one more suggestion:
you all should consider adding screenshots and a bit of color/theming to your page! i really think it helps convince others to play your game if they can see how it looks first.

lol yeah, i remember that one! it wasn’t too bad lol. but also i thought you would have learned from flyblocks on paths in Levelhead as well but… nope. but like i said, it’s a cool mechanic in the game for sure! i don’t know if there’s much you could do about it. maybe making the currents switch back and forth quicker or something could help? or maybe shortening the distances you have to swim through or that the blocks move through. either way, it’s not that bad but i’m impatient. :D

i appreciate the in depth feedback! those are definitely points we would have liked to fix but ran out of time for the jam. maybe post-jam we’ll smooth it out. thanks for playing!

haha! i don’t know about that, but thank you!

thanks! what do you mean we didn’t add all the controls?

heh. it was more like a couple days, but thank you for the compliment and glad you enjoyed it!

yeah, those rocks are tricky! sorry they gave you so much trouble. thanks for playing!