Really cool game concept! I've definitely not seen the theme handled like this before! I enjoyed it. I'm glad to read that you adjusted the win rate! :D I actually found it pretty hard, too!
And looking at the game, I think I'm glad I'm not a professional developer, haha.
A really cool Blackjack alternative! Did you come up with this yourself, or did it already exist? If not, that's very impressive! I wonder why this variant isn't being played in casinos yet! (Probably because of the roguelite elements, haha.)
My friend had this game in his queue (he did not make a game for the jam) and he said it was the best of the bunch, so i had to check it out! i see what he meant!
The controls are really interesting, and flying through the caves is genuinely fun! I played it for a good 10 minutes, though I mostly kept failing at Level 4 :D
If you decide to keep working on it, it might make sense to combine the fuel and health meters? And adding a few obstacles would really give the game an extra boost.
hmm, i think i actually did not explicitly write that you always start by moving all three! good catch! you always have to move the whole stack but you can stop at any point!
thank you for your comment! these are good ideas! but i think i will have to get better at the game myself before i can say which openings are good haha
Really loved the game, was one of my favourits this jam! The theme was implemented in a very creative way and i loved the three little slime guys.
I think you did an especially good job with the puzzle design! Having a great idea is one thing, but making good levels another! They were not that hard of course, but entertaining and most screens had a new idea i think.
I hope you keep working on the game! there are pretty easy ways to think of expansions for the mechanics, first and foremost having more slime guys!
I think the ending was pretty funny with that hollow-knight titlescreen :D
the game is good and has an interesting take on the timer mechanic! (although, as others wrote, it is very hard. i barely finished the beginning)
and you wrote that you started late and went with the first idea, that is impressive!
but maybe this games funniest legacy will be that it was submitted 1 second before the deadline in the jam with the count down theme. that is shakespeare-level of comedy. was that intended? some kind of meta-joke? :D
heyy, nice concept! i had fun placing the pegs. I could see this on mobile! Needs a bit more polish and maybe the option to change pegs after being placed down, so you dont have to reset the whole level.
Atmosphere is indeed unsettling and the art style is memorable. Exploring the kitchen was fun. :)
small items are difficult to spot and pick up and having the timer continue during dialogue and the tutorial makes the beginning a bit frustrating. and it was a bit unclear what to do at times. With clearer highlights and a restart or tutorial-skip option, this could become a very interesting game!
veeeeeery interesting game. i enjoyed it a lot, the art is great and the atmosphere very spooky indeed.
Only "criticism" i could think of is that a lot of the command combinations did nothing, which of course is expected for a jam game. Add some more things that can happen and i think you have great game! (and maybe add an option to speed up the dialogue a little bit haha)
Interesting concept! I too was a bit unsure what to do :) if you keep working on the game, that could be one of the first areas of improvement. Music was catchy and very fitting and the pixelart pretty cute :)
interesting concept, like if tetris had no falling blocks.
Could probably release as it is, with made the only nitpick, that there could maybe be a small tutorial. I was a bit irritated at first when i got a bonus. (UI does indeed not work correctly when not in fullscreen btw)
But other than that very well polished! Great job!
what are you, some kind of bookworm adventures masochist???
but seriously, very fun and unique concept! i can confidently say, that i have never played something like this, but it was an interesting and fun experience!
art is absolutely amazing! whoever did this has great talent and dedication and all that stuff.
i struck down the Nightfather! I like the idea of an anti-metroidvania, i think there is interesting design space! If you keep working on the game, maybe forcing the player to give up specific abilities (even for a time) could be interesting.
I must confess, i always chose the fighting-abilities to go and managed to get through the enemies by dashing and double-jumping pretty easily. But as a proof of concept i think this is as good as it gets!
The art style is absolutely beautiful! The character designs, portraits and environments all have so much charm, and the little player character is especially adorable.
I was a bit unsure how the rocket minigame tied into the rest of the game, but it fit the game theme so well :D (i did get a time of 0.048)
The camera felt a little unintuitive to me, since it moves whenever you move the mouse towards the edges of the screen. I also had the hitboxes and what looked like a debug overlay visible throughout my playthrough, not sure whether that was intentional or just in this build?
Even though I could not experience everything as intended, the presentation alone shows how much care went into this. I would definitely be interested in trying the fixed version!
i think you did a great job in the short timeframe! I thik the concept is strong, setting up a solution and watching it succed or fail. I think, if you keep working on the game, a way to make failing more fun would be great! and as others already pointed out, the tutorial could benefit from some tweaks. the wordplay was funny and i think it is something like a unique selling point, but it distracted partly from the tutorial, maybe a bit less is more :D
Really impressive entry! The tutorial explains the mechanic very good!
The game becomes pretty thrilling once everything starts exploding. I made it to the exit by mere milliseconds several times, which felt incredibly satisfying!
Also, cutscenes and an actual story in a jam game, especially when they are not even the main focus? Serious dedication! The music is great too and fits the whole experience really well.
My only small thought was whether a preview of each bombs blast area during the planning phase might be helpful. On the other hand, that might take away some of the tension and experimentation, so I am not even sure :D
took me a moment to figure out that you are supposed to switch between the time hub and the overworld, but then it clicked! After that, experimenting with the different connections and seeing the little bubble flow along the lines was very satisfying, especially once the whole screen started filling up with them :D
i second that the art is really great! the game had a nice feel overall! could easily see it becoming a full version, like each month releasing a different eldritch horror :D
two small nitpicks: i think the tutorial needs a bit work. It was fun to try out the interactions, but maybe two or three more sentences what each c reature does would ease the beginning! And second: the site says you have 50 days, luring the unaussuming victim into a false sense of security ;)
i have never heard of Fireboy and Watergirl, but i will write something nonetheless... ;^)
I think it works very well as a coordination-based puzzle game. I played both robots myself, and I had fun figuring out where they needed to climb on top of each other, where one of them had to wait, and when the other had to act somewhere else.
I honestly did not feel much pressure from the battery, but sharing the energy is a neat concept. If you expand the game, it might be worth integrating that mechanic more directly into the puzzle solutions, because it has a lot of potential.
The pixel art is charming and very well done, especially considering the short time frame. Great work!
Having every character shout the name of the game (which is already funny) is brilliant. It is genuinely funny, immediately memorable, and honestly kind of genius from a marketing perspective, very "clippable".
The concept is stressful, but in the best possible way. New concepts are introduced at a nice rate, although I initially struggled a little to get used to the core concept.
Moving the coins, the book etc and even the interface elements around gives the game a good amount of personality.
The premise reminded me a little of Terry Pratchett’s City Watch books. Of course you need a Coin Counter in a fantasy city. Yet it is "too mundane" for a lot of fantasy worlds to focus on, but this is the source of the humor. I love it!
The character designs, voice acting and dialogue really sell the setting. Feels much more developed than most jam games, both mechanically and in terms of worldbuilding! Very original, charming and impressively polished. Great work!
got 4800 Points! Very good "downwell-like", it can get quite frantic when you have only a few seconds left and dash down all the time to get to the next coffin! I had great fun and would love to see this expanded!
The leaderboard is "real" i guess? Not sure whether i should be satisfied with Rank 26 :D
One of the most "immediate fun" games i played in the jam! Impressive level of polish! Congratulations!
Crazy game! It feels very polished, and the central idea is really clever. I like chess-inspired games, and this one was a particularly creative take on the concept. Using Gambit to move an opponent’s piece was a great aha moment.
it is especially impressive, that you not only came up with a great concept that fits the jam, but ALSO made interesting and expectation-subverting puzzles with it. These two things do not always come together!
some small things of confusion: 1: i think i do not get cascade. In level 3, it let me move the bishop three times, but when i moved the pawn first, it only let me move 2 times?
2: i expected adrenaline to work in that way that you move, capture and if you captured, you move again, but i think it means the move prior?
unfortunately, i now have to go to work and only finished like 8 levels, but i will come back!
Thank you for the detailed comment!! I honestly think you were onto something…
The main question I take from this is whether the repetition rule should favor the attacking or the defending player. I’ll have to think about that a bit more if I keep working on the game. It does need some kind of repetition rule though, because otherwise the AI can get stuck in long back-and-forth loops.
By the way, yesterday I tested the AI at a search depth of 7 plies (one move took like five minute) because I had the same suspicion about the 3-stack strategy. My impression was that it loses against a stronger player because you overextend on one side, allowing the opponent to counterattack. But in my (chess-heavy) experience BCC has some pretty unintuitive movement patterns , so the right moves can be hard to spot.
You’re also completely right about the undo function! I’ll look into it. :) and maybe add some better feedback about who won haha
Thanks again! Comments like yours make designing a game fun!
softlocked myself in mere seconds, but this is probably the idea to teach the mechanic! If that is the case, well done! Creative idea for a platformer or a destroy-the-whole-environment-style game like DK Bananza. Has potential i think!
I haven’t completed the game in any way yet, but I just wanted to say that I absolutely love the concept. It has a mellow melancholy to it. The art reminded me of a mix of Outer Wilds and Super Mario Galaxy. You could release it as it is, and people would buy it. It’s also probably one of the few games I could see myself coming back to! Great work!
