itch.io

Its scope is impressive, as is its polish! A solid economy / trading sim in the vein of sunless seas and the like with a charming aesthetic and a surprising amount of complexity. The only thing I’m left wondering about is its climate relevance and themes — there is space, after all, to make a similar game that’s reckoning with the resurgence of sails on shipping vessels to reduce carbon waste, or a similar game that leans a bit more in the Citizen Sleeper 2 direction, where you have narrative opportunities to make a difference in the regions you travel to through the jobs / trades you choose to take on. It is nevertheless a very well-constructed game, especially in the short time allotted (and I’m sure I’ve only seen a small part of it), but it is hard for me at this moment to identify what message it wants to communicate.

Charming art and endearing characters, but I unfortunately wasn’t able to see much of the game. I attempted playing a few times, but I kept either crashing the game from trying to interact with the spreading plants with an axe or accidentally walking into a spot that I presume to be a dev-tool that teleports you to a different area with no way to return. I think that the writing and aesthetic direction show promise, but I think with your remaining time you are left with something of a decision: try to get the gameplay systems functional, or down-scope the game to be primarily concerned with dialogue. The latter may be a way to lean into the game’s existing strengths, although I recognize that the former is likely more in line with your original vision. Whatever you choose to do, though, I wish you the best of luck!

I think as a game with an educational message, this does a good job! Grafting is a huge part of what enables the agricultural industry to thrive, and this communicates the core of how it works. So in terms of triadic game design, I think both its meaning and reality are already pretty clear. Like others, I had some bugs, though in case the bugs are different I’ll lay them out here: for some reason after completing the first task (which worked just fine), every time I picked up a box and put it down it would increase in length by about two-fold and decrease in thickness by roughly the same. The table also no longer registered the boxes as being placed on it, and the point that boxes would be dropped from had shifted pretty far left of the camera. For the sake of reproducibility, I’ll say that leading up to this bug, I had cut two different plants without having picked the first box up (not sure if that’s at all related, but you would know better than I would). In any case, I think you’re working with a solid concept! The main thing is just implementation, and perhaps expanding the game a little to better motivate the player to engage with it if you have the bandwidth.

There’s a fun sense of continuity between scenes, and an overall charming atmosphere. When it comes to the moment to moment decision making, I was initially a little torn, because the management sim enjoyer in me almost wished that I was forced to make more difficult decisions (as it stands you can say afford to say yes to everybody’s requests, so there wasn’t much of a sense of stakes from a mechanical perspective) — but on the other hand, this is a game with a message, and to make it more mechanically difficult could potentially change the message. So it’s a tough call! But either way it was cozy and comfortable. If I had one more thing to say, it would probably be that the writing could use a tiny bit more proofreading, only because it’s so central to your game as a package.

Just added a mac build! You’ll need to go into settings and give it permission to run when you open it since it’s unsigned, but it should work.

Y’all have already made some real impressive progress! My one very minor note would be that it could be fun to use a shader such that all the different visual components blended together a little more — I noticed that a lot of the backgrounds are dithered, and it might be fun to see what it would look like if everything was dithered, or posterized, or what have you-ed. But on the whole I have no doubt y’all will make the deadline and meet the brief.

I see what y’all meant when you said our games are similar! Your demo already showcases some very solid scaffolding of the puzzle mechanics, and the concept art is phenomenal. I’m not sure I have anything useful to say at this point, which is probably a good sign haha. Looking forward to seeing how it develops!

Minigames represent a pretty unique challenge for a game jam’s timeframe. That is, I think that scope creep can be a little harder to spot when any individual component is on its face simple, but the fact that you’re ending up having to make a bunch of different versions of those components can become a little overwhelming. That said, I think Warioware is a good inspiration with respect to that problem, since many of its games are just reskins of the same basic mechanics! Another similar inspiration might be Rhythm Heaven. A useful question to ask at this stage, though, is what the smallest possible version of this game might look like. Is it one minigame? Is it three that all use the same basic inputs? In any case, rooting for y’all!

I’m assuming this is an analog game, in which case it’s already impressively far along in development! I must admit that I have trouble picturing the game’s feel without playing it or seeing it played, but the interlocking systems of the game seem like a promising source of complexity. I will, however, echo the concern of the person who rated this game previously. That is, it feels like this game treats the human intervention in these spaces as a static fact of the environment — which makes a lot of sense from the perspective of an animal that’s experiencing it, but perhaps misses out on an opportunity to explore the ways that change can be cultivated and grown. It is also an interesting decision to make the game competitive, a decision that can be leveraged to communicate that with decreasing access to space and resources animals are pushed more and more into each other’s territory and what have you, but could also potentially be taken in a collaborative direction if you wanted to include messaging about the collaborative nature of effecting change. Tbh any direction is valid, but I wanted to at least communicate that you have a lot of options to explore!

I think this is a very manageable scope, which is wise for a potential solo dev project. It also did immediately get a chuckle out of me, which is a good sign for a satirical game! As someone else mentioned in the comments, I am left with some questions about the relation to the theme — “plant a seed” evokes in me notions of cultivating something and allowing it to grow, so maybe there are ways to incorporate that narratively in the game through establishing the player character’s motivation to destroy the data center (and what they want to replace it). In any case, I wish you luck in the group search and regardless am looking forward to seeing what direction you take this idea.

Really great art style and really fun application of the theme! The mood board especially gives the impression that y’all have already dedicated a lot of thought to this concept. One thing that does occur to me to ask, though, is if y’all have thought about looking at city builders as reference, rather than tower defense games. In particular, I think frostpunk would be a very worthy comparison thematically, although against the storm might be a better comp mechanically. In any case, this seems like it is primed to be a solid game with a very coherent identity!

Howdy! I think my favorite thing about your game is its messaging — the notion that there are no disconnected events when it comes to our climate is an extremely important one to understand, and this concept communicates that idea concisely. My remaining questions are mostly to do with the particulars of the gameplay. At the moment, I have a tiny bit of trouble telling whether you’re planning on more of a puzzle-like vibe or more of a management-sim type game. But regardless of which direction, the relationship with the theme remains strong!

I’m glad you liked it though! I keep bouncing from project to project but this is one of the ones I’d like to eventually come back to, alongside Poetry Blaster, Get Crackin’, and one game that is still in the drafts

I’m gonna be so honest that’s probably my bad haha

I think there’s a bug in my code where very occasionally an item will get counted twice, or counted not at all

Also glad you liked it :)

I’m really sorry about the accessibility issues! When I first made this I really didn’t anticipate other people seeing it at all, so I didn’t think enough about how eye-strain inducing it is. If I ever get around to polishing it up, that’s pretty high on my list of things to fix.

And in the meantime I did in fact tell Maya! But she doesn’t tend to like putting her art out into the world until it feels perfect, so I still don’t have a timeline for her releasing any of her music. I’ll definitely post an update here if she does though, given how much interest people have had in it in the comments.

Thanks so much for playing! And for your kind words. Sorry that I deleted my comment, I got very in my own head like “oh no I seem like i’m using their game’s comments to self promote” and ended up being maybe overly self conscious >_<.

This has helped inspire my next project

I think you did a great job of communicating the tempest of emotions that underlies everyday life these days

Just wanted to shoutout Trash Dungeon, a game that was submitted to the same game jam that my friends and I just participated in (the S.I.C.K. Jam). It came in a well deserved 1st place, but I also figured it should get more eyes on it than just the ones belonging to people who also submitted to S.I.C.K. It is a shockingly polished game for having been made in so short a time-span by a solo dev.

(Here’s the link again if the one above didn’t work for you: https://vaaasm.itch.io/trash-dungeon)

this is an awesome puzzler that’s SICK as hell and reminds me that i actually live in chicago (clark/division is my stop! i’m there like 3 times a week)

i also totally didn’t spend 20 minutes caaaaaarefully attracting and repelling all three rats in the Sheridan stop to keep two of them on the buttons while the third ever so slowly creeps past the lasers both ways because i didn’t yet realize that dead rats block lasers and press buttons

i am left with two questions tho: 1) is it intentional that the attract/repel is sometimes inverted along one of their axes when there’s a no-rat zone between you and your cursor? and 2) why does everyone clown on the redline i take it all the time and i think it’s great

o wait i just saw that you replied to a similar comment saying you can fullscreen with F, my bad

it’s a perfect 5 stars across the board now

this is some of the SICKest shit i’ve ever played

the challenge level? excellent. the juice? overflowing. the sounds? bit-crushed and freakin crushing it.

it would have been a perfect 5 stars across the board, but between the mouse not being bounded to the window and there not being an option to full screen, i found that in the most exciting, critical moments where i teetered on the edge of success and death, my mouse would almost always wander off the window and launch some random app as i clicked repeatedly to fire, killing me instantly. If not for this fact, i’m pretty sure i would’ve played this game to completion multiple times over (Edit: I was wrong I can’t get past level 4 even after fullscreening lol — still 5/5 tho), but after dying in this manner five times in a row i decided to put it down for now. but i cannot overstate how good the game is anyway! and i’m sure that’s an easy fix (i dunno what engine you used, but in godot it would be as simple as changing the mouse capture mode).

also hey i recognize you from C.I.G.S.! i presented my game EyeOS there

these Ooze Goons cannot contain me forever

(which is to say you made a game with a compelling level of challenge)

This is freakin Sick

feels like it would be the poster for a childhood game that would always sit somewhere in the back of my head

Oh hey a fellow funky car-based game! The crane arm is an absolute delight, and so is the self-righting mechanic that comes with it (it made for a cool / surprising first tutorial instruction). I think one small thing that could potentially go a long way for your game would be having a camera that follows the car at a slight lag and with somewhat dampened movement, because the frantic movement of the vehicle—while wacky and awesome—was a little disconcerting at times when translated to the camera.

But also just wanna reiterate that y’all did a great job making a game that feels wonderfully silly and playful to control! And you tutorialized the mechanics of the game really well

Thanks for your kind feedback! And yeah, there was a lot of content that didn’t make it in quite yet before the submission period ended, hence our lore-rebrand to “long lost tech demo” haha. Unfortunately, the UI and some of the settings also broke during a git merge error in the last 5 minutes of the jam, but you should still be able to progress dialogue with Enter! Just not with a gamepad.

Oh one last thing! Just wanted to clarify that while there are a few “Big Tag” locations that are static, you can otherwise tag whatever surface you want.

[ Lore: ]

Come play Randy Raccoon’s Dumpster Drive! This classic Super Indie City Konsole tech-demo was once thought to be lost media after the last-known copy was stolen—and subsequently buried in the woods—by a rabid fan trying to drum up hype for their S.I.C.K. themed ARG. Its demo disk gained a niche following amongst once-and-future game devs, and its staunchest defenders will tell you that it provided the direct inspiration for Kirby Air Ride’s now-iconic City Trial mode. Its biggest detractors, on the other hand, will tell you that it’s an unfinished glorified PSA attempting to teach kids that littering is totally uncool by dressing up its messaging in the aesthetics of grunge culture. And its mysterious developers, the ominously-named 503 DWELLERS, have refused to comment on any of these claims—but occasionally a rumor will surface that their small office’s lights are back on in the wee hours of the night.

Whatever the case, this abandoned game and its legacy are an undeniable presence in the transient history of that ill fated Konsole—and for the first time in over 20 years, it is yours to experience (courtesy of an anonymous donor who insists they were not the one to bury it in the woods).

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and “Paint the town RAD”!!

( https://trainspotter.itch.io/dumpster-drive )

play it here!

Welcome to Wing, a simple game for your simple pleasures. In a world of snappy, responsive platformers with pixel-perfect parkour gameplay, why don’t you take a load off with Wing? Every platform is a respawn point; every moment of stillness an opportunity to glean new information; every fall a gentle descent. My goal was to encourage the player to take their time and relax into the gameplay, and allow them a moment’s reprieve from a fast-moving world.

i don’t know if there are words appropriate to the task of responding to and expressing appreciation for feelings this deeply felt, but at the very least i can say that i’m sure you could make art like this—like, in the first place, this game probably is what it is because i didn’t go into it expecting anyone to see it. which is to say maybe you already have made art like this, and just haven’t shared it yet. or maybe not, and you’ll just have to make it later. either way, art is cool and games are cool. queer art and queer games doubly so.

at the moment my friend has said she doesn’t want to put it on any kind of streaming service, but i’ll do a devlog if she ever does

i like this comment, feels like a good goalpost

because bodies are pretty spooky

thanks! i think your game has a lot of charm too—it was a surprising delight when i realized it was a creature collector in addition to a cleverly framed narrative.

you and me both, friend

this recalled to mind memories of a softer world I didn’t realize I’d forgotten

also what is this font! very into it

Come one, come all—come on up and blast the deconstructed remains of my poetry from the sky to convert it into poetry of your own! Don’t like my poetry? Well it’s your poetry now, buster! Don’t like poetry in general? THEN BLAST IT OUT OF THE GOSHDARNED SKY, BUCKAROO. It’s free, it’s easy, it’s endlessly replayable (hopefully, eventually)—I should be paying you not to play it so I don’t have the rest of your life on my conscience. But instead I put your life in your own hands—hands you can use for BLASTING.

Find it here (if you dare): https://trainspotter.itch.io/poetry-blaster

Fine print: this game is still very early in development, please be patient while it develops to its full blastiferous potential. If you’re mean I might cry and then the poetry will be about you, buddy.

Hello one and all! If you’re like us, you have trouble putting down your phone at night (it keeps the monsters away and the thoughts at bay, amirite)—well no longer! For we have developed a game that juuust skirts the line between engaging-enough-that-you-don’t-switch-to-social-media and boring-enough-that-you-can-put-it-down-when-you’re-sleepy. It’s called Lullaby, and we hope you’ll be its friend.

Find it here: https://trainspotter.itch.io/lullaby

oh oops is this not a thing, I just assumed based on the language of the jam page

The title basically says it all. I’m thinking of submitting a game I made in the first week of June, and at the time I made it I was 24, but I have since turned 25. I was wondering whether that game would still be eligible to be submitted to the 24 and under group, and if so whether a game I have made since turning 25 at the end of June would no longer be eligible. I know this is an edge case but just wanted to check before submitting. Thanks!

i feel like silliness is my favorite path towards seriousness