itch.io

I think I could get addicted to this genre, whatever it is. The whole idea is cool and innovative, it felt like planning an executing a burglary. However, I would make the surveillance / staking part replayable and maybe even have an option to rewind and fast-forward, because the player has to do multiple things (find the targets, draw routes, check and memorize the movement of the inhabitants) and I struggled to do all. For the first time I was surprised when it cut to the infiltration part because I was just observing and didn't yet draw anything. The narrative parts were well-written and funny, with a few typos here and there. The audio really supported the whole atmosphere.

Very innovative and fun game, it got me hooked (pun intended) in no time. Maybe some subtle background track could make the grind even more enjoyable.

Thank you, I really wanted to do a management game for a while but it's hard to find a scope that's engaging enough but still feasible in the jam's time limits. Although I saw 2-3 games that had a very similar gameplay and interpretation of the theme and they were really fun!

Looks cool, like those old PS games, and the control flow was great, I enjoyed gliding through the rooms. I also had to check the video because I couldn't figure out where to go and the guidance was not much of a help either. A solution for this could be either updating the level itself to better "nudge" the player into the right direction (mainly when it comes to the key) or having a more prominent display for the guidance (layout? blueprint? plan?) because it was very hard to read. Kudos for including so many settings, how do the graphics quality presets work, what do they chance, if you don't mind to share?

Great game, I really liked the graphics and the controls had an easy flow, but if I'd had to pick one favorite part, it's the "victory" chinchilla sound after a successful day. Fits the theme perfectly with a very unique interpretation and fun gameplay.

Absolutely, it's already an impressive achievement to be able to make a playable game in only 9 days, making it balanced and polished is a skill learned over time, through many iterations, and something I also struggle with.

I liked the concept in general, but I couldn't figure out what the game wants to be, is more of a platformer or a stealth game, both, or maybe something else? It's nice that you had the time to implement so many features (e.g. upgrades, enemy detection and behavior, tutorial), but many parts felt a bit unfinished, or at least unpolished. For example:

• The resume menu opens at the beginning of the tutorial, which was a bit confusing.
• The tutorial text was overlapping with various sprites, making it harder to read.
• Enemy spawning and movement felt a bit weird and unpredictable. I saw no repeating pattern that I could use to guess when they turn around and we had the same speed, so they spot me instantly and unexpectedly, and without the upgrades there wasn't much I could do. Even as little as some indication, maybe a split second of a pause before they turn around could greatly improve player experience.
• The enemies were moving between screens, but the player cannot see what's going on there, so at any time an enemy could drop from below or even detect from the other screen, which makes it substantially more chaotic.
• Enemies tended to spawn and drop to the lower level after a short while, which soon made the ground an inescapably dangerous place with a conga line of enemy red cones.

Of course these all could be design choices that you made, but to me it felt more like you needed some more playtesting and balancing. So, overall, the game was fun, but I'd recommend making sure that your primary gameplay loop is as polished as fun as it can be before moving on to nice to have features like upgrades. And the way to do that is a lot of playtest --> balance on repeat.

Congratulations to your submission and keep it going!

I like your art style and your take on the genre. The watercolor-looking painting went well with the background music. Some sound effects for the interactions (e.g. jump) would go a long way still. Sometimes the environment was a bit off, the spikes looked a bit like a wheat field, and some landings on the mushrooms that I would've expected to make were failed (but it might just be me, I'm not very good at platformers). Overall, a cozy and pretty little game you can certainly be proud of!

I found this gem when checking out your games after playing Gret Cheese Robbery, and I loved it! I'm all in for language-related games, some day I'll make one on my own. The hand-drawn graphics were easy on the eye, the number of languages and words posed just the right amount of challenge and the controls were intuitive and easy to use.

Sleight of paw got me :D It's always good to see another game with a similar gameplay and interpretation of the theme, see what's similar and what's different. I'll be honest, yours feels overall more polished, you had time to implement upgrades as well. Are you generating the mice randomly or do you have set pictures?

Loved the whole hand-drawn UI, especially the map. Reminded me of Mewgenics in the best sense.

There are some smaller typos in the text, nothing major, just a recommendation to double-check them.

I'm not sure I understood how the chance to fail the missions works. I'm talking about when the police arrives, not the individual mice getting caught. Is the bar in the top left a chance of failure that is checked on each interaction?

Also, poor Devlin, he was by far my best guy, but he spent more time in jail than on missions.

Congratulations to the game, it's really impressive that you could do this all by yourself!

A weird and funny game, with some innovative gameplay. I liked the industrial sounds and the animations, as well as the randomly generated (?) descriptions. I'd be interested to know how you calculate the percentage score, if you're willing to share. I got real obsessed and managed to get 100% a few times.

Thank you! The recurring characters are a work of LevChickie. I really appreciated that addition, because it felt like they gave the game a more unique character. The soundtrack and SFX are the work of kri5z.

Thank you for playing it and providing feedback! I think you're on point, as others also pointed out, the game currently lacks the long-term goals and progression you would expect from strategy / management game. It worked well as a prototype and we have many ideas we had to cut to be able to finish on time, but we'll probably revisit it after the jam and implement some or all. We'll see where it goes, stay tuned if you're interested! :)

Another Thieves Guild game! :) While it is obviously unfinished, I loved the bones of the system you put together, you managed to include so many stuff in there in a short amount of time. It's probably also why you ran out of time to finish and polish it, scope creep is real. If you decide you want to keep working on it and finish it, let me know, because I know I would enjoy a finished version of such a game (that's why we also made something similar). If not, you still did a great job of making the most out of the 9 days and learned a lot in the process!

Thank you for playing it and your feedback! I agree, the biggest missing piece in the game is the long-term goal (we can call it tertiary gameplay loop) - more stuff to spend your money on, more long-term investments and a scope to fit it. Right now, it's more like an early prototype of a more fleshed-out management game, but it's encouraging to read that people see the potential. We'll discuss our plans after the jam, which include several improvements to the mission log (I agree that it does feel a little more bland than what it could be) and see where it goes.

I was mainly preoccupied with the programming, so music and most of the writing is the work of my fellow developers.

A refreshing idea for the gameplay, I don't even know what to call this genre-wise, something like a roguelite carrom. I loved the hand-drawn visuals, they gave a unique character to the game, so the simple gameplay never felt boring. I had some issues with the controls, which I detailed in the notes below. Bonus points for including the funny tutorital. The music supported the funky vibes as well, and the DIY SFX were hilarious.

Some notes that I took:

• The edge-of-screen scrolling for the intro very confusing, I spent a minute or two clicking, dragging pushing all the various keys on the keyboard before I realized I needed to scroll to the right with the edge of the screen. For both the intro and the mission selector, I would recommend adding the option to drag it with the mouse, I think it's intuitive and a bit easier (while also keeping the current control). The mission selector also bugged out after I clicked outside to a different screen and could no longer get back to the missions I should've been selecting from and I needed to restart the game.
• The inverted zoom with the mouse wheel was also weird. In no way does this affect the gameplay, I just see no reason why I would need to scroll down to zoom in and scroll up to zoom out.
• Using Spacebar or Enter to close the post-exit dialog - why not use a button? You can control the whole game with only your mouse except for this part.

Thank you for playing and your feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Very stylish game, the visuals and the music fit very well together. There were also a surprising number of features you could fit into it, including the minions (loved that). For the most parts, the controls also had a nice and easy flow, but the card placement felt a bit weird, because it seemed to always place the next card into the middle, which was unintuitive when I was working on a combo.

Also, I got stuck on my second playthrough when reaching a Trickster boss. Before that I had a Golem (got minion) and two (three?) Rests. For some reason I cannot play any cards. I hear the sound when I click on them, I can open the deck, I can end my turn, but cannot play cards. Even after I ended my turn without playing any, the issue still remained. Web version.

Thank you for playing it, and for your kind words! I tried to return the favor, but unfortunately couldn't make yours run, not even from the source code, but I would be interested, so if you decide to drop a web or Windows version after the jam, let me know!

Oh wow, I have so many thoughts. This is a genre I don't usually enjoy, but I like cyberpunk and netrunning so I gave it a shot, and I ended up thouroughly enjoying it. I'll be honest, I was very bad at it at first (I usually play strategy games so my reflexes are unmeasurably bad) but the dynamic flow and the aesthetics made me try it again and again and boy was it rewarding to get better and better. And finally, on the last level I managed to go below par with a few seconds.

Some notes that I took:

• Very cool menu with the code exeuction and the changing metrics.
• Hover style is unintuitive on the buttons, I expect the brighter color on hover, not the other way around.
• The tutorial said "left shift or c" for sliding, but this looks like an error, because left shift is also for dashing and it didn't work for me when trying to slide.
• The slide attack was cool with the audiovisual feedback, but sometimes it wasn't hitting the enemy with what looked like a clear hit to me. I ended up avoiding them instead, because that was faster anyway.
• When resetting the location, I was sometimes a bit confused about the facing, wasn't sure which direction I was supposed to go and it kind of broke my flow.
• I liked the idea that after grabbing the intel, you had to trace back on the map for exfil.
• The quit at the end, surprising but thematic. :)
• Not sure if it was intentional or not, but by pressing some number keys (1-3 or something) I could make the messages appear without completing the previous level.
• I just noticed that you made this as a solo dev, that makes it even more impressive.

Overall, a fun game with cool atmosphere and nice flow.

PS: I was interested in what happens when battery reaches 0% and I thinnk I broke some laws of physics:

I like those games where spellcasting is broken down to different components, so the gameplay here was very appealing to me. It was a bit difficult to understand how everything works, but I think I got the gist of it after 2 deaths. I think changing the font to a more easily readable one and/or making use of some icons or color coding  (or something similar) would help a lot to get a grasp of what's working well and against what.

I wasn't sure I made the best decisions, I was trying to get more dice because it looked like I can't keep up the pace with the enemy, but the dice I stole weren't very useful when I used them. Are the numbers rolled each turn randomly or is there a limit? I never seemed to get anything above 3. While the enemy seemed to have an endless supply of dice, I always ran out. Is the intended way to play to steal a lot, and if so, if it better to steal the numbered dice or the elemental ones? This is not a critique, I'm geniunely trying to understand the tactics here so I can come back and enjoy it with a bit more success. :)

The visuals along with the subtle music worked well to create an arcane atmosphere, and the controls were easy to use in general. Aside from the minor nitpicks above regarding the UI and guiding the player a bit more, it was a well rounded experience, impressive for a solo dev.

Beautiful game, I'm always amazed when people managed to put together such a good-looking 3D game in 9 days. The gameplay was fun, I played ~30 minutes just to try out what I can do, where I can go, how can I break it. I liked that implicitly had multiple ways to get to the markers. I'd like to say that I managed to get the MacGuffin without harming anyone, but that's not the case. One of my favorite things was that I could climb trees to get to the rooftops.

I'm not sure how the checkpoints work, because I got #1 (to the right) alright, then I got caught a few times while messing around and it got me back to that, that's clear. However, when I got to #2 (center back), I got caught while opening it, and while it loaded back to #1, I still had 2/3.

The controls have a nice flow, though a few times I expected to be able jump to a certain place and I couldn't. Also, it was unexpectedly hard to get out of the water.

The level design was also great, not only good looking, but really encouraged scouting and planning ahead. I especially liked that the player sees the ominous tower in the very beginning, foreshadowing where the MacGuffin will be. The enclosing mountains were a bit ugly, but completely fine for a jam game where this would be the last of your priorities.

The menu was also beautiful with nice animations. I expected to be able to close the pause menu with ESC, but that's just a minor nitpick.

A shadow version of the enemies seemed to remain in place after reloading a checkpoint, not sure if it was intentional or a bug, but it was a bit confusing at first.

The enemies were sometimes bugging out, shaking in place. I also found a place where I could just cheese them until they gave up:

I see we had similar ideas for the theme. :) It's good to play another management game, there are never enough strategy (management) games at jams.

I liked the characters, it felt really bad to lose one that I enhanced so much, especially the first guy. Were the portraits randomly generated? 

I really liked the choices I had to make each turn. Do I look for another guy hoping for the right skill or do I take that 4 and try to improve it myself? Do I risk that guy with the 8-10 or do I spend another round improving their skill? I guess the difficulty for each check was constant because I saw it improving from 55% up to 95%. Was it capped at 95%? We did the same :)

The way I interacted with the UI was brilliant, I always know what was going on, I could place the markers in accordance with my mental mapping, this corner is for improvements, this one is for the heist, etc. One thing I noticed that tooltips from already used items were showing up on empty places (sometimes over other cards). It wasn't game-breaking, just a bit confusing. Also, one really minor improvement I would suggest is to keep the heist/job card below others at all times. My way was to put the characters "into" their relevant slots, but then I accidentally moved the heist card and could no longer see the characters unless I moved them. Again, minor detail, but I think it could improve the experience.

So congratulations, this is a very fun game, and especially impressive work for a solo dev!

Edit: Also, I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but I could go into the negatives on Heat.

Thank you for playing the game, I'm glad you enjoyed it! A lot of the initial efforts went into the character system, then once it was all in place, we just kept posting these weird generated fellas to our chat. :) I think we'll have a chat with the team after the jam and see what direction we want to take it, but it's really great that so many people see some potential in it.

Thank you, kri5z did a really good job with the audio, with very little direction from me. I'm glad you posted this, it's really cool to see how people did! The endgame summary was actually a late addition, I felt the game needed some more personal touch.

It was a really fun game, I appreciate the guide at the beginning, made it much easier to grasp what's going on. I generally liked the controls, but I really couldn't figure out the aim after many tries, it sometimes went into unexpected directions.

The ant behavior was unexpected, because they followed very distant routes, so for example if I wanted to catch one on the right side behind the tree, there was no way I would get the one that went around the pond. I did see that the duck periodically stuns them, but even that wasn't enough for me. Maybe I'll try to recruit everyone as soon as possible next run. So back to the ants, I noticed on the first run that I had only one food left and the best strategy was just to keep it for myself and wait for the ants to return and end the wave. Otherwise, when I had multiple, it felt a bit unrewarding to return the stolen food from afar, because 3-4 ants already circled the basket like vultures and as soon as I put the food in there, they'll jump on it.

I loved the audio, the music and effects really fit the game well and contributed to the goofy experience.

Overall, it felt like a well polished and fun little game, maybe with little need to fine-tune the difficulty, or maybe I'm just bad at it :) For a first time jammer and solo, you can be really proud of this one, because it didn't feel like a jam game, but more like an old-school flash browser game.

Thank you for playing it, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I really liked the idea and gameplay of remotely controlling a robot, and even though the game made it clear, my character is not even there, just the robot, it still made me very nervous. I have ambivalent feelings about the level design, because it really captured the claustrohpobic vibes of navigating the quarantined hospital well, I think you could play around with the layout and especially the textures to communicate the indended direction more clearly. Of course this is subjective and maybe others didn't have this issue, but it took way too long for me to realize where to go in the first room. But I still had lots of fun with it, in the anxious, pissing-my-pants way. Sound was an important part of that, I liked the various little noises and the enemy sounds. One more thing, I think you should pause the clock while the tutorial is ongoing.

I actually rolled through the wall somehow near that point where the enemy lies, not sure how it happened.

Oh, that's cool, I'll come back to try it with that extra knowledge! :)

Thank you for playing it, I'm happy to hear that you had fun! The turns left before recovery are actually displayed on the "My Crew" dialog, should say something like "Injured (X turns)".

Yeah, I know that feel, but you still ended up with a very cool game, so congratulations! Regarding the tooltips, I'm not an expert myself, but I think you can probably add a control node as a child that would cover the whole sprite (but without any displayed content) and the tooltip should work on hover.

One of the best entries I saw in this jam. The idea is original (as far as I can tell), the gameplay is innovative and fun, all the pieces like art, audio, UI work very well together for a fun experience. One minor nitpick, first I had fun sweeping away all that stuff on the map, but when it got in the way when drawing my 8th (this time perfect) route, it was a bit annoying.

Thank you for playing it and giving detailed feedback! I'm expecially happy that you liked the characters, that was basically the first thing I knew I wanted to implement as practice. I made the portrait part and LevChickie the name generator. Your ideas are appreciated, while we had to cut a lot of stuff from the scope, I do have plans to improve the job resolution part to make it less repetitve and more interesting.

I remember this from from the WIP channel on Discord! Cool concept, a good example if a very simple, but well-executed gameplay. I liked the creativity that went into the various enemies and weapons. The music was a bit hard on the ears for me, but I guess it's part of the sketchy style.

A simple but useful improvement that I would recommend is regarding the tooltips. First, I think they should appear much faster, I always wanted to check what a weapon does but it felt way too long. Second, if that doesn't go directly against some design choice of yours, I think you could also make the information about the enemy's weapons available (e.g. as a tooltip) because the player's choice to attack, swap or steal will always depend on what they are facing. Of cource, if I steal a weapon and swap to it, I can check it myself, but that's 2 turns lost just to get information.

Thank you for playing it, I'd glad you liked it. Sounds like a vicious crimelord to me! Originally, the Heat was supposed to have a hard limit around 100 that would mean a game over, but I decided to disable that because it was hard enough already to balance the maths without that and I thought if people decide to spend some of their precious time to play it this week, it might be a better to err on the easier side.

I love pirate games, I can never get enough. This one was fun as well, apparently I'm the best one-man crew across the seven seas.

It was fun to play, I especially liked how the music changed once I got into combat, so I knew when I was attacked by the third ship. Were there any increase in difficulty, like more damage or change in tactics? I saw they got better in manouvering, the first one didn't even seem to move, the third one was doing spin-and-shoot tactics, while the fourth one seemed to constantly avoid my line of fire. I also liked the peaceful island in the end.

One thing I'd definitely recommend is some indication of what I can interact with and how I can do it. I saw the text appearing for the sails (though I didn't what that means) so after that actually had a harder time realizing I have to click on the helm and the cannons as well. Tried the paper with the dagger as well, but that didn't seem to do anything. So yeah, some more indication for interactables would go a long way!

PS: I even managed to board the enemy ship, although there wasn't much to do there and they sank my ship soon afterwards:

Thank you for playing it and your feedback, I appreciate that you shared your strategy, that's useful to know! Yes, I definitely prefer slower paced games, especially when it comes to making them.

And yeah, I know how it feel to lose best boi right when it matters most:

Thank you for playing it, I'm happy to hear that you liked it! :)

Beautiful game with a great atmosphere. I actually played it 5-6 times to the end to see the effects and what happens if I get to 0 coins or health. It is a very well polished experience, which is impressive as a solo dev. The pacing felt a bit slow in the beginning, but I came to accept it after the third playthrough as part of the melancholic tone. The gameplay is very simple, but I think that's okay for a jam game.

One issue I found is that the Retry button didn't seem to work when I died after reaching 0 HP.