Of course, the game deserves all the praise haha! As for my interpretation, at the start I thought the main character was either coming to terms with their own death or an otherwise terminal condition, hence why they were stuck in the room and it kept becoming more and more disconnected from reality as time went on. But eventually (and especially with the ending) it became more clear that they were instead willingly locking themselves in, with the "locked door" being more of a metaphor for a mental barrier preventing them from facing a conflict in their life (which I assume has to do with their strained relationship with their parents that makes the protagonist feel like they don't belong, as they seemingly decide to run away from home at the end). As for the characters I think each of them represents a part of the protagonist's inner thoughts, with the frog being toxic positivity as a coping mechanism, the cat being a far more pessimistic (yet grounded) view and Oscar representing self actualization itself, hence why his arrival is uncomfortable, drives all the other characters away and overwhelms the protagonist. I also thought the character's presence (and further lack there of) itself was a way to explore the out of place theme, as their initial arrival feels paranormal and their style clashes with the room's, but later on their sudden departure, despite leaving the room "normal" again, instead feels uncanny (out of place, one could say, haha) as we've gotten used to their company. It shows that things can feel out of place both in presence and absence, which is a very clever perspective on the theme.
Sorry in advance for the giant wall of text haha. I'll be looking forward to the video!
Lovely idea with great level design! It really reminds me of the puzzles from Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time, but with its own twist! I'd love to see a version with more difficult levels and a system to track how little "ticks" you took to complete each to motivate optimization! Great work!!
I never got to play this game during the jam, but now I have to say: I know why this got first. The writing is sharp, the art direction is on point and the mood is just right: perfectly unsettling and out of place (this being so low on the Theme category just shows a lack of reading comprehension skills from most people :sob:)
In many ways it feels more like a thought experiment or self reflection exercise than a game, and its very rare to see such raw and unfiltered emotions and ramblings spewed across a canvas like this. Its uncomfortable, disorganized, disturbing and yet very beautiful. I am so curious for a behind the scenes on this because I really want to know if my interpretation of the story was close to the original. Incredible work!!! Its a pleasure to share the (unofficial) podium with such a talented artist.
Short but really sweet! You grabbed a concept and executed it perfectly gameplay wise. I just wish there was more stuff to do, maybe more levels or a scoring system based on the number of moves, and some sound design. Really cool!
I really really enjoyed this game! My only critique is that the difficulty is a bit crazy, and that out of the 3 levels the first one is by far the hardest. Other than that the art is amazing and the gameplay is really fun, I would love to see this game expanded with more levels and gimmicks!
I really love this game, even after realizing there was no end to it I just kept fishing for a while. The constant transition between the calm and chaotic energy is awesome, and the quick time events are super fun. I also love the graphics, I just wish there was a little progression like making a collection of humans or at least their hats. Really cool game!
Super original concept and really well executed! I did encounter some bugs but otherwise its super clean and I think with some polish it could definitely become a great survivors-like!
Really cool game! I love the style and the idea for levels is so unique, it has basically limitless potential for a concept so simple as box pushing puzzles! I really suck at it though, its been 40 minutes and I gave up on level 5 :sob:. Great job!
Really cool spin on a genre that I otherwise don't particularly enjoy! I also really like all the effects and visuals, the game feels super snappy and cool! I don't think I'm very good at it haha, as I just kept trying to activate the glitch blocks to get rid of them lol, but I managed to get 2744! Cool game!
Neat little game! I can definitely see the Balatro inspiration, even in the UI. I just wish there was some more juicyness to it, as everything feels very static as is. But the concept is really cool and so is the gameplay!
This is a neat little experience. The main objective is pretty trivial, what I found to be really enjoyable was putting all the matching items in rows and them trying to combine them all for extra score during the little timing window. I personally don't like that there's a bunch of instructions on the same screen as the game itself, but other than that I think its cool for what it is, and you definitely achieved your goal of creating a solid inventory system! I scored 264 points btw!
I really like the game's idea, its extremely original and super well polished. Sadly I really suck at it so I couldn't finish it even after many, many attempts lol. One of the best entries in the jam for sure, I could see this as a full fledged game on steam!
There are some male characters that look pretty feminine so that's probably why you're confusing their gender haha, but you can also check their name to confirm. I know that the algorithm I made to generate crowds never fails because I tested it extensively :p Thanks for playing!
The point isn't to find "single differences", its to find one thing common among 3 of the 4 people and pick the other one. For instance, it doesn't matter if one person is bald if everyone else hasdifferent lengths of hair. I tried to make that clear in the tutorial, but some people still get a bit confused over it. Either way, thanks for playing!
Incredibly polished game with great level design.Using rain to indicate the gravity direction was such an incredibly smart choice, giving great readability to the puzzles as well as creating a super unique aesthetic! Loved it, you could definitely add more levels and colours and make it into a full game!
Pretty fun little game! I think the gameplay loop is very fun, it feels like something you'd see on the app store back when mobile games were starting to become a thing. My only gripe is with the graphics, as they feel cobbled together from many different places. I would've preferred a game with "worse" hand drawn graphics for everything that had a more cohesive sense of style. Other than that, good job! Oh, and I managed to score 12340 haha
I really like the art and the minigames, but outside of that the dialogue becomes a bit repetitive and the game is a little buggy. Other than that, nice job!
Thanks a lot! I tweaked the character sprites at least 3 or 4 times throughout the jam to make sure the attributes were as noticeable as possible, so I'm glad that shows haha!
I tried my best to capture the essence of older arcade games which become addicting because of how infuriating and difficult they are at first, haha! Thanks for playing!
I think my main gripe with the game is that for this style of gameplay similar to Balatro my choices felt like they didn't matter very much unlike the latter. Cards have levels, but since the right card can always beat its counterpart you don't have much incentive to engage with that system. I just kind of kept increasing my income and reducing the cost of cards in the shop until the game became trivial as I'd always have more cards. I think there is a lot of potential here gameplay wise, but it requires a good look at the balancing side of things. Hope this helps!
