itch.io

This is a great idea. I found it hard to figure out what was happening and why. But when I finally got one right the reward was worth it. Even getting it wrong was fun as sometimes I got a little tune going.

Would like a little more guidance on how to play. The Heron’s clues were obvious after I figured out what to do.

Then again, I’m not a puzzle fan, so that may be just me not wanting to think too hard.

All in all, great idea. You should develop it further.

This is brilliant!

Sad. Heartwarming. Stressful. Joyful.

I don’t know if you have any experience of Alzheimers, but you are successfully capturing some of what the experience is like. If this was deliberate, great job. If not, great job. Education about Alzheimers, and dementia in general is very important.

:-)

I have another version now, will post that soon. It’s good enough now for me to send out to the artists - let someone with real talent for this kind of thing work their magic.

I’ve never been able to recreate this. If anyone else see’s it please let me know.

Hmmmm…. that’s strange. There’s nothing like that happened in any testing and there aren’t any significant rigid bodies to push the player through. Thanks for reporting I will do some specific testing to try to repro.

Thank you for testing it for us. Next update is focusing on the length of the game so we don’t want people falling through the floor. Did you fall through the floor or off the floor (as in stepped off the edge)?

The latter we know about and will fix very soon. The former is not something we’ve seen, yet(?)

Well done! I have lost too many hours to Vampire Survivors and now I lost at least an hour to your game - very impressive for a game jam, normally I only last for a few minutes.

Some gameplay feedback should you want to continue with this:

Movement is too slow. Once I had the first level boots it was better, so perhaps start a little under that speed. Then it would be possible to get a little distance between you and those things that needed three daggers to kill

It ramped too quickly. This could be resolved by having some of the area damage last a little longer (the ring of fire and aura for example). When you get surrounded you need to be able to create a corridor out.

Not enough healing being dropped. Either reduce the damage done or increase the healing being dropped (but don’t make it too easy, make sure I have to fight to get to it, see previous comment).

Need to mark the edge of the playable area. I got myself trapped while trying to create a column so I could out maneuver them.

Didn’t feel like there were waves coming. It just seemed to ramp in intensity. No pause in which I could grab some experience and healing. That may be because I kept dieing though. I may not have got to the end of the first major wave.

Overall good fun and I think I will play again. Want to see if there is a wave there.

[EDIT]

OK I went back and I SURVIVED! (10 mins)

Definetely no waves there, so you need to add that. Got to have some lulls in the action. But the other comments are all about learning the game. So take them or leave them. Now I am going to have another game…

Thank you for this. I am seeking games that can help me understand what my child is going through. I don’t know that I understand yet, but after playing your game I certainly feel that I have a better frame of reference with which to discuss and build a better understanding.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Thank you for this. My youngest child suffers from Anxiety and Panic Attacks. I played this game in the hope that I would understand a little more about what it is like for them. I don’t know that it achieved that, I will have to discuss it with them to find out. However, at the very least you have given me a tool we can use to discuss things so that I can at least try to understand more.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Nice. The swimming action is really good. I found the camera a bit too responsive and there were a few glitches when swimming forward and up. But for the most part this was really well put together.

Great progress for a weekend jam.

That’s awesome. Thank you.

That’s perfectly fair. Not everything is for everyone.

Thank you for following up with me on Discord so as not to share any spoilers here. Here’s what I learned from BunnyVikings experience (with spoilers redacted):

That’s super helpful. Thank you.

So it seems a few people want an ending in which [redacted]. I was planning one, but never got the time to implement it (you do get to ask about [redacted], but you don’t get to follow that path as it’s not written). The only two endings right now are [redacted] or [redacted]. Had you tried to hide the dragons existence from the populace you would have [had the other ending because….]

I read somewhere that in an IF game a typical player only sees about 20% of the content. That seems to be true of the few playthroughs I’m aware of. That I was prepared for, but what I had not realized is that this meant that if you only have a 8 major paths they are only going to hit a couple of the real story changing decisions. Which is what you describe.

That’s cool though. I now know how much content one needs to create a true interactive fiction game. I now understand why games like Fallout have so much “action filler” content. Make a decision to take a quest then spend ages in a traditional FPS until the quest is complete then have some story while you find the next quest.

Thank you for taking the time to give me more feedback. This is super helpful.

Thank you. I look forward to making something like this that isn’t purely text. But I enjoyed learning the branching story technique here.

Yep that made it work. Nice looking assets.

Oh… And yes the music was awesome. I’ve never worked with JCoop before. I will do so again, I hope.

Thank you for the feedback. I did add a “press space to finish the text” option but it was right at the end and there’s no indication that you can do it unless you try out of frustration!

You can also scroll back to if the text flows off. I think made the scrollbar colors too indistinct though, since you missed it.

I agree re the ending. I didn’t have time to do the proper animation for the endings so I went for the Black Adder goes Forth ending. It felr good to me, but then I watch Blackmagic UK play on his stream and he had the exact same experience as you. Good learning in that one for sure.

I’m glad you liked the factual stuff thrown in. As I was making the game I thought the format might be an interesting teaching tool. I threw those in to experiment. There’s actually about 15k words of Wikipedia content in there, but I only exposed the very first interaction in this version.

Thank you for playing. Thank you for the feedback. Most importantly, thank you for the inspiration since it was you who suggested someone do an IF game. I learned loads!

Back to the classics. Great game, well done. Engaging. Good replayability for a game jam game. Difficulty level was pretty good, I really felt myself weighing the odds of getting that heart.

More time would bring more variety and that would, of course, be worthwhile.

Well done, I liked it.

I couldn’t get this one to run at all. The start menu came up but no cursor. I tried guessing where the cursor was so I could click on the start button but failed. Each time I pressed the word “false” appeared in the top left and there was a “hahh” or “ughh” sound. That was all I could get out of it.

Strange since others clearly got it to play.

There are around 8000 words and 170 choices in the game. There are two endings and about 8 major paths and a further 10 minor paths through the game. As with most interactive fiction most players will only see a very small percentage of the game on each playthrough. For someone who hasn’t written any fiction for over 30 years I thought that was pretty good for a game jam :-P

I’d love to know (on discord) which ending you got, which major choices got you there and why you figured it to be incongruent. I don’t claim to be a writer so your feedback on the writing would be helpful.

What I aimed for was to have one path which gives the expected outcome if you play as the ruler of the utopian land you start in. That is if you maybe the decisions I believe a benevolent dictator would take. The other ending occurs if you take a different path. Perhaps you took the different path? This is interactive fiction, so you decide the outcome. With more time there would be more outcomes, but time is the key resource in a game jam.

Thanks for playing. I’m not a fan of interactive fiction in this format, but like all game jams I enter I wanted to learn how to do it and I am proud of what I managed in <40 hours. With a better writer I now know how to build genuine branching stories into my games. With or without text.

I am a big fan of tower defense games so you had me with this one. Great stuff. I took three attempts to get going but then I nailed it. Some of those towers are pretty powerful!

The highlight for me though, was not the game but the theme song. I loved the little pause you injected… made me smile!

Just played your game… not only voice acting but I believe you “wrote the theme song, sung the theme song” too

Needed more time, like every game jam. I should setup time to play with others online. The base atmosphere was really nice and even though I was the only one there I could still play. Great job.

Loved the “airstrike” voice command.

I just watched the VOD, very entertaining. You added alot to the story with your acting and side plots. Loved it! Folks should checkout your channel: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1306729992 (that’s to the VOD, but check the channel too)

I don’t think I play tested the path you took, so super happy it worked ;-) I’m a little disappointed you didn’t visit the goat herders house, that was a primary branch in the story with a couple of animation paths in there (just trying to get you to replay!).

Thank you so much for making it more engaging with your antics. If I do another I should have you voice act it.

Thank you for your kind words. And I love that your played and choose together on stream. I’ll have to check that out. I think that’s probably the best way to play a game like thus.

I could do every character in a heavy northern English voice, that’s for sure :-)

Glad you noticed my rather eclectic style in game jams. I always try to learn something new.

Thanks for playing.

Very very good. Use of lots of assets here, but none of them felt like simple “drop in and be done”. Well done.

Nice. I had no idea who I should be attacking so I attacked everyone!

Without players not a lot to do. Either work on some AI or add some single player quests.

Great job for a very short amount of time.

Carmageddon indeed. Took me back.

More complete than most of the games you get in a Game Jam. Great job all round.

Starcraft for the world!

Well, it’s not quite Starcraft but I felt it was in there somewhere.

Nice game. It felt a little long given the lack of variety in gameplay, but maybe that’s my simple lack of patience. For a Game Jam game we don’t expect much gameplay so nothing to worry about. Keep up the good stuff.

By the way, I loved the little touch of the helicopter flying about.

This was fun. One tiny suggestion to improve re-playability. Add a timer and keep track of the fastest time a cake was made in. I’d go back a few times to beat my score.

Short, way too short. You should take that as a compliment. It means you had enough of a start to make me interested. So, more please…

Great job

Strange choice in music, certainly not a battle anthem ;-)

Need some more feedback with explosions and fire effects. Even some simple sounds and a little screen shake will make a ton of difference.

Great start though. The game plays through which is not always the case with game jam games. Well done.