itch.io

one other option would be to partner up with someone else for music. did you see this post? Composer looking for a team! - FrenJam 2: Electric Boogaloo community - itch.io

you could also try messing around and pencilling in notes in Fruity Loops if you haven't already. you might find it's easier than you thought, but i guess not everyone has a musical ear. Fruity Loops is $99 past the trial, but if you just wanted to make chiptunes you could try free software like pxtone.

thanks! i like this description

loved it! the presentation was really tight! the art is stylish and the battle backgrounds are cool! the gameplay is definitely fun (you can't really go wrong with bullet hell). the cool nickel and the penny had cool bullet patterns. having the grabbable green bullets adds great risk/reward. i do have a few notes, but they're just nitpicks.

i wish there was a bit more strategy to the car-washing segments, after a while it's pretty straightforward. the most interesting part was when i couldn't find a smudge of dirt on one of the wheels and was wondering why i couldn't go to the next level. maybe you could get attacked in the car-washing segment too?

to me the worry in a game like this is that the "minigame" part feels completely separate, and it's like playing two different unrelated games. i think you mostly dodged this by adding and subtracting time through the battles, making them feel tied together. if you were to develop this further, i'd just keep that limitation of "minigame" type encounters in mind, and maybe look for ways to more tightly couple them with the overworld. maybe something can still come after you in realtime in the overworld while you're battling, so you have to choose your battles carefully? just a thought!

this is very subjective, and balancing during a gamejam period is quite tough, but most of the bullet patterns felt a little easy. since hitting one bullet is by no means run-ending, by making the bullet patterns more challenging and balancing around that, you might be able to make the game more fun while not locking out beginner players, since they can still keep going even if they lose some time.

rock-solid entry, had a great time with it. thanks for making it!

the graphics are cute! moving the units around was intuitive. the way you can see enemy units behind walls is cool. there didn't seem to be much content, though, it seemed after only a minute or two i was just doing the same thing over again, unless i missed something. still, it was definitely fun to play around with for a few minutes! good job!

thanks! i hope Blow Globe gets streamed as well! it's especially impressive for a first game jam!

nice! i liked the random level generation and the music was fun. i think it would have been a lot more charming without the AI generated splash screen. AI generated imagery is inherently off-putting and we weren't supposed to use it for this jam. but i think you laid down a fun foundation for your game! the reason it feels a little grindy is because the combat was just so easy, and you need to do so much of it in order to get the items. i wanted to see what the garbage king was but the price of 100 scrap just seemed way too steep. but i did have fun with it, so you did a good job. thanks for making it!

awesome, with some determination i was able to barely beat level 3! level 2 probably still is too hard for me haha. i am using a controller.

level 3 was cool because it really feels like dangerous winter driving where you're trying to stay on the road... the game has a great push/pull to it because you're trying to do things fast while at the same time you're trying to slow down so you don't careen off the track. i think erring on the side of difficult was a good choice for this game, because without that urgent time pressure the push/pull vanishes from the design.

theoretically the game shouldn't necessarily need a level skip, but with a gamejam it's hard to do enough playtesting within the timeframe to finely tune that sort of thing. it could be just my skill issue on level 2, or maybe i'm missing some vital driving technique that could have been taught in a previous level (not necessarily with an explicit tutorial, but just via the design of the level). i suppose one solution you could have considered for the jam would be to have bronze, silver, gold medal for each level, so getting bronze lets you advance, but you have to clear the difficult time to get gold.

fun! i liked the different baby transformations! the platforming started to feel a little samey near the end, but i was driven forward by the desire to see what screwed up chimera or being of pure elemental energy i could turn this baby into next. i had fun playing, thanks for making it!

it was fun! i think there's potential for a "Revenge of the Sunfish" type game where it's more about the experience of being taken from game to game, than it is about the individual games themselves. wave 2 was funny, but is it supposed to just keep looping after that? wasn't clear if i was supposed to be able to beat it somehow. anyway i had fun with it, thanks for making it!

i really liked the animations, there is a lot of hype baked into them! the ability to create your own combos is a cool idea. it did feel a little incomplete, not sure if there's a win state. it seems like you can obtain moves more than once which is a bit confusing. i found myself wishing there were more challenging enemies that necessitated the use of the powers i was getting, instead of just more grunts where most of the time when they hit you, it's just because you let down your guard. but it was definitely a cool entry with the animations and all the different moves! i had fun with it. thanks for making it!

oh and i did encounter the bug when using keyboard, but i switched to controller and it was fine.

this is fun, great job! there is a definite fun factor to jumping through the bullets, and the boss at the end was cool.

for sure, there needs to be more feedback when the player gets hurt. it's one of the most important things that can happen in the game world, and the player needs that feedback to get a feel for how well they're doing without having to keep glancing at their health bar.

a checkpoint before the boss would have maybe helped it feel more fair, but you don't necessarily need it, depending on what type of game you are trying to make. when i died to the boss and got sent back to the start, the reason it felt unfair to me was because i had to do the same thing over again, and there wasn't really room for me to do it better or faster. if it was rewarding to improve my skill at the game, then it would probably be fun to play again. so, for example, instead of giving the player 5 health for each level, it might instead make sense to give them 5*4=20 health for all four levels (or however many there are), but the health doesn't regenerate when they enter a new level. that way, if i can just perform better on my second run, i'm rewarded for my skill progression and i have a better chance to beat the boss, because i'm saving health throughout the different levels in preparation for the boss.

just thought i'd give some feedback! i had fun playing it. thanks for making it!

i beat it!

this has a really charming hand crafted feel to it! the platforming challenges were solid. it felt like most of my deaths were due to how rapid the character's movement is, but it's not necessarily a problem, just something to mention. it does help to give the game a unique feel -- if the rapid movement is an intentional part of the design, it'd be cool to see levels that explore not just the weaknesses, but the strengths of the fast motion (getting away from hazards quickly, etc). i like how i had to slide down the wall at the end of the last level. i had a fun playing it, thanks for making it!

i thought the snowglobe presentation was adorable! the snow particles look great as you rotate around, and i like the ice shader. the general vibe reminded me a bit of a 3PlaneSoft screensaver (very high quality screensavers imo so this is my version of high praise). it could've used some ambient wind sounds or music or something just to make it feel a bit more alive, but it was charming as is.

the driving physics seem fairly accurate to real-world ice driving. turning in the direction of the skid seems to help regain control and preserve momentum.

i gave up on level 2. i really wanted to see what level 3 looked like, but it got difficult for me to see any sign of progression in my skill level between runs.., likely it's a skill issue on my part as i don't play many realistic driving games. it's just a steep skill curve because the movement can seem so random at times -- maybe a few easy levels would have helped with the skill ramp.

turning the plow was a cool mechanic! i gather if you turn it in the direction of your turn, it will have a wider cross section with the snow and plow more snow. it might have been interesting to play around with a wider plow so the effect of turning it is more obvious.

nice solid entry, a simple idea well executed. great job!

loved the presentation! it had that prerendered graphics charm which gets harder to find since, with modern game engines, it's arguably easier to just make the game realtime 3D. i have a soft spot for "minicar" games so this one was a treat.

the controls were rock solid, but i actually expected them to be a bit less rock solid on the slick surfaces, if surface slickness is supposed to be a point of the game. would've been cool to see a bit more risk/reward, like for example a shortcut that's more challenging/risky because it has a slick surface. or maybe even the ability to go faster by making yourself more slick.

i was also impressed with the driving AI and how it overall seemed to be able to tell what place i was in, not the easiest problems to solve in a gamejam timeframe. everything felt pretty rock solid.

i had a great time with it, just barely managed to come in 1st place at the end. thanks for making it!

very fun, solid entry! there was a good amount of content in there too, even a final boss. you can tell care went into the pixel art and music! i'm a fan of the freezing in midair to shoot idea (it's similar to something i've been using in one of my prototypes too). i think you utilized it well with the shielded enemies, making the game more about positioning/movement than aim. just pressing a direction to midair dash felt a little janky at first, but it does help to give it a wild "on rollerskates" feel.

i loved the graphics and the music! there's just something just so tactile and satisfying about pixelated claymation. the music combined with the clay made for an offbeat and creative vibe when starting the game which i really appreciated.

the mechanics were fun! it did eventually start to feel like there wasn't much strategy to what i was doing. i mostly just matched colors, prioritizing rows that were closer or had powerups. i didn't have to think too hard to beat the game, but the vibes made it rewarding all the same!

the best reference i can think of is Zuma. Zuma is a color matching game that is sort of similar in that there are one or more 1-dimensional tracks of colors that can be shortened via matching, and you can't let them get too long. but you can inject colors into the track at multiple points via aimed shots. this opens up the important mechanic of comboing, where you can pile up planned matches to intentionally delay them so you can get a higher score later. this adds risk/reward to the gameplay --- you risk making the line longer so you can get the reward of a higher score. it just felt to me like Soul Slide would've been even better with more risk/reward!

for example, what if you could sacrifice a turn to rearrange the contents of a line? it'd be a risk because that time is valuable. and then what if the only way to get powerups was to get combos? then you'd have to balance the risk of building combos with the safety of just doing regular color matching, adding some risk/reward and push/pull to the gameplay.

my last thought is what if matching three in a line added a single block of that color to the next line clockwise? that way your combos could span multiple lines.

just figured i'd add my thoughts because i loved the experience and thought it ended up with some untapped potential!

i liked the presentation! the UI was especially slick and i liked the idea of playing as a Johnny Bravo type dude. i don't think i'm in the demographic for a pepsiman-style autorunner with button combos, but i had fun!

thanks for being gracious with the feedback! i always feel a little awkward sending unsolicited criticism, even if constructive, but i figured it could be helpful! if i write a lot about a game, it means i liked it and want to help the authors go further in the future. the changes you have planned sound like good ideas!

i totally understand about wanting a minimal UI. i didn't understand at all about the numbers on the cars. billboards would definitely be helpful feedback, though if you wanted to get fancier, one idea might be that, when a car dies, you make its number fly up from the bottom of the screen, then decrement it while the player can see, before it fades out. it'd probably help too if each number was a different color, so it's extremely obvious that the number starts as the number of the car you just killed, then decrements to the number of the car you're about to see.

now that i know about the car numbers i was able to make it to the second level! i did bounce off that level eventually for the other two reasons (long straight segments and trying to make it through those traffic arrows with the braking cooldown is hellish). i did have fun though, thanks for making it!

first of all, the soundtrack is top notch! is there a place i can find more of this person's music?

the idea of your attacks being able to kill you on subsequent laps is good game design! it has risk/reward baked into it. i do think, with some improvements, the game could be a lot more fun.

im guessing the ultimate goal of the game is to kill all the other cars. for context, i love "masocore" games like Getting Over It, etc (though I dislike the "masocore"/"rage games" genre label because they make it sound like the player is in pain, rather than just someone who enjoys getting better at a game for real instead of the game getting easier for them via leveling or whatever). on paper the fact that one mistake starts the game all over doesn't bother me. but i didn't have the patience to beat the forest track for several reasons.

it'd be nice to have some indicator of actual progress towards success (some UI saying "3/12 cars killed" or something, for example). without it, it's hard to gauge the success level of a run, and i'm not even sure if what i'm doing will actually lead to success.

a lot of time is spent just on straight shots of road, which feels a bit slow. it'd be nice if there was a way to speed up, and a reward for taking the risk of going faster, like the game keeping track of your completion time. maybe it does, but if that's something the player should strive for, it should probably be onscreen somewhere.

the controls feel a bit delayed, but i can see why they were necessary to make the act of putting oil in front of an enemy car more challenging and rewarding. one thing i questioned was the braking cooldown. i'm sure you added it for a reason though. if so there should at least be more feedback since it's a bit nonstandard, usually i'd expect to be able to tap brake to go just a little bit slower.

i did love the design and the overall vibe so i think with those little tweaks the game could be great!

ah thanks for clarifying regarding the snap! definitely, there should be some feedback showing it not working under 4 heat (the most obvious solution would be a red "<4" appearing next to your heat gauge when you try to use it). i was trying to use snap to kill flyers but it never worked because of the heat.

i'm flattered you want to interview me! i'll consider it. can i see past episodes of the stream? you can find me as ultimatewalrus on Discord if you wanna chat further (my pfp is a cool sun)

very cool art direction! it's fun and fast-paced! i had a hard time connecting what i do with whether i succeed / fail, and what the low kick / snap abilities are for. eventually i reasoned the low kick is probably for the smaller enemies, and it seemed to do a better job at increasing my heat when i do, but it wasn't communicated as well as maybe it could have been.

the game's great art and brisk movement compelled me to try and figure it out, but it felt like i wasn't really making progress between runs. i couldn't figure out how to kill the flying things --- one time i jumped and killed one, but most of the time they're too high up. it could be a skill issue on my part, but assuming there is a reliable way of killing flyers, i bet if you just add a bit more feedback to the different abilities it would help a lot! overall awesome entry!

the deformable snow was cool! i liked how AAA it was between levels. on my first playthrough i stupidly didn't realize you can go faster outside of snow, i just thought my player was sometimes really slow. it could use a little bit more feedback on snow slowing you down. it's fun though! great job!

definitely my favorite so far! it's a clever concept executed well. it was really satisfying to build up a ton of speed on the last level. it's small but it feels complete. it has a nice litttle vibe to it too!

i got confused in the first room where you get the green - i thought you only get to use it once, so i actually made my way all the way to the end without changing from green. maybe in that first room it might make sense to show the space-bar prompt until they press it twice, to make sure they know :) other than that it was pretty much perfect!

i love the presentation! the soundtrack is awesome and i'm usually pretty picky about that. the rocky environments look great, and the gameplay is solid.

hopefully you won't mind some constructive feedback! the fact that i can hold drift to recharge without turning feels like an exploit. i tried to play without it, but it still felt too easy to just zigzag drift to get your boost back. it would be cool to see the game rebalanced around Parking Garage Rally Circuit-style drifting where you are locked into the turn and you just decide whether it's a tight or wide turn, forcing players to actually use the mechanic as intended, for turning.

the tutorial says kill enemies or else. i guess this is because not killing enemies speeds up the bulldozer? if that's true, there should be better feedback so i can actually tell there's a connection. this is a great mechanic on paper since it makes players balance between going fast and killing enemies. the issue is that you can just go off the side of the track to escape the bulldozer, and it seems balanced so that this is basically a requirement on lap 3 (either that or skill issue on my part). i think it would be cool if the bulldozer were inescapable, that way the game actually ends up getting played in the way that's the most fun.

it's an impressive jam entry, great job!

this is a cool idea! if i understand correctly, i'm controlling the ground under the car, not the actual car itself. i like how the ground wavily oscillates. with some determination i got 2014 points, dunno if that's a good score or not haha.

it seems like there are points on the ground where the car gets kicked up in the air to make it harder? more feedback might be nice (e.g. a rock or something on the ground so you can see the reason for this kick-up instead of it feeling random). it might also give the game some risk/reward spiciness if there were more incentive to go fast instead of slow and steady which seems safer.

thanks for the kind words! you could try pressing Tab during gameplay to switch to perspective mode, which may help some people who struggle with positioning

thanks so much for this glowing review! it sounds like you had the intended experience :) 

as for steam releases there are links in the credits screen where you can follow my work! my biggest project right now is arcade2000, a site which intends to bring together multiple games like this (from other devs too, not just me) in the best online scorechart system ever. my interactive freeware site is ultimatewalrus,com and if you really want more content similar to Kersploosh! you can check out Vertabyss and Vertico which are the first two games where i was figuring out this 3D submarine control scheme. (i did not reuse their code for the jam as they were different engines, but i did iterate on their design).

thanks for the kind words! if you struggle with positioning you can try hitting Tab during gameplay to switch to perspective mode. it's a feature i snuck in at the last minute, so there's no mention of it in game

thanks so much for the glowing review! nice comments on the graphics tech are really nice to read, because i worked in the game industry and i'm trying hard to bring some of that experience into the indie games i make. hopefully, that will give me the edge to make a living as an indie, despite the crowded market now.

godot engine is so awesome for making games like this. the bubbles are spherical GPU particles, and then I wrote some shader code to make them look like bubbles and to distort their vertices via the inbuilt noise functions.

good luck on ascending the leaderboard! i will say that the current WR of 4:11 is easily beatable, you just need to learn how to use scatterbombs.

this game is gorgeous. the open world seems huge. nice job!!

really good!! perfect game jam game, can't even think of anything to constructively criticize :) the big burger mechanic is just delightful. there were some really cool puzzles where it initially seems impossible until you grasp a game mechanic. there's a good amount of feedback/juiciness on the game's most important mechanics. the levels even have a sort of relaxing ambiance from the drone of the treadmills and fans. the art is cute, love the idea of cramming an eel into a square-shaped sprite. title screen is great too. 

my friends and i had a great time playing this! really felt like a lot of passion was put into it.

one small thing i thought could be improved was that the light can be seen shining out of the pumpkin in carve mode, but not in world. my friend put a secret message on her pumpkin but was disappointed when it didn’t show up in world.

i’d assume this is because it’d be too many lights/shadow maps. but maybe, you could just fade in a shadowed light inside the closest three or four pumpkins to the camera’s view vector? could be something like:

1) get all nearby pumpkins

2) for each pumpkin, get the vector projection with the camera view vector. if it’s negative (behind camera) throw it out

3) get the screen space position of the pumpkin, if it’s out of bounds throw it out

4) with remaining pumpkins, sort them by distance to camera and fade in a shadowed light in the top three or four. you could keep the effect faint too, so it isn’t too jarring when it fades in and out

sounds amazing as always. i loved messing with the left joystick (something really satisfying about it) and how the percussive actions get quantized.

very cool idea! short but sweet. just one of those games where you're better off going in blind.

thanks for the kind words! easy roll by accident is an excellent point. i think it will automatically roll if the player's centerpoint is beyond the edge of the dice when their rectangular collider lands on it, so it should probably only roll if they are actively pressing in that direction.

definitely my favorite of the jam so far! it's a unique type of challenge since it taxes your ability to do two things at once, but once it clicks it feels silky smooth. the art, sound, and music were polished, and the gameplay execution was on point. i don't have any constructive criticism, it's great as is.

i like the ability to use controller as, though with the default configuration, i wasn't able to jump and move pieces at the same time, making it inferior to mouse and keyboard. but once i realized i could remap jump to a trigger, the controls felt perfect.

this is one of my favorites that i've played so far! the art and music were super polished, and the gameplay was compelling, which added up to giving the game a really goofy fun factor that i loved. it could use some balancing to make it more challenging, but either way i had a great time.

i really think that the player's construction should be part of their collision bound (kind of like Tumiki Fighters) so upgrading has a downside. and that potentially even parts could get broken off and carried away by the enemies (and maybe even used by them)!

thanks for the kind words! if you scroll to the bottom of the online scoreboards, there is an integrated Discord thread where i posted some tips on dice positioning. probably, it wouldn't hurt to integrate these tips into the game at some point.

nice! this game had cool vibes. i really like the idea that the protagonist got pulled out of retirement just because some bottles really needed to be sniped

i like it! it plays well, and gets challenging near the top. my biggest issue was that the camera doesn't pan upward if i'm outpacing it, so if i'm doing well, i get punished by having to wait for the camera to slowly catch up with me. i saw there was a timer, so i'm guessing the original intent was to have it be a score that you could aim to beat, but i couldn't find any way to make the camera go faster. but you did a great job, this entry is stylish and fun!