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I love the art and presentation. The key art drew me in, and the little manga-esque storyline at the beginning was great. The in-game art and music give it wonderfully calm and melancholic atmosphere.

It does bother me more than it should that Maju has gloves in some of the art but not others. Did the character design change slightly during development? I think this is an example, though, of a case where the minor issues only stand out because it's generally very well done.

I was really excited to play this game- a tetris- esque puzzle game in a sea of shmups- but unfortunately I couldn't get a hang of the mechanics. I'm not sure if there's something I'm missing or if I just ran into some bugs. Some colours of blocks disappeared when I stacked a few, but others didn't even when I stacked them even to the top. Sometimes they'd disappear anyway, maybe when I stacked the same colour beside them, but it didn't seem to be consistent. When I hit the top, the game didn't end, but new blocks started stacking into the middle of existing stacks. I thought part of the game was cut off at the bottom and there was stuff going on down there, but from the official screenshots it looks like that's not the case.

The web build appears to be broken, or is having problems with my browser. It softlocks in the first gameplay sequence with the weird monster; no matter what option I choose, the game just sits there. There's a worrying lag spike in the intro where the ship stays in one spot for several seconds (is it loading something in the background?), too.

I might try a desktop build later, but I probably won't have time to get to this before the rating period ends.

I like the concept of "magical girls with magical swords".

I'm not sure if what I hit was the intended end or not, but I killed a few enemies and made it to a kind of tower structure I couldn't figure out how to get over.

It's hard to say much about a prototype in this stage. I think the one possible issue is that as nice as the environment looks, it's really hard to tell what's actually walkable and what's just part of the background.

I had a lot of fun with this one. It doesn't feel all that prototype-y; I didn't realize it has a troubled development until I read through the page. That's not to say it doesn't have some rough edges, but the overall presentation is pretty polished. 

The gacha system is really opaque. It seems to be tied to Shards (and this is confirmed by the jam page) but it's not clear how these interact in game. At first I thought I had to fill the Shard meter and then pull, but then I was able to pull without it full. But only sometimes. Sometimes I'd pull one item, sometimes many, and it seems to be related to Shards collected, maybe? I think what's happening is that you can fill the bar multiple times, but if there's an indicator of available pulls I couldn't find it. Maybe that could be added to the bar, or it could change colour each time. It's also not clear what the icons mean, or that the timers mean the bonuses go away (I thought they were cooldowns). I'm not really sure how to address these; the announcement text needs to be linked to the icon somehow. It's also possible to get totally screwed, not by pulling badly but if you run out of bonuses with several strong enemies on screen.

Gacha UX issues aside, I liked the shooter gameplay but people who play these might be able to weigh in on it more. I was able to play for several minutes and was generally doing pretty well, which I liked but I suck at shmups so others might find it too easy. There are parts that feel very bullet hell, but the large and unclear hitbox and lack of (significant) invincibility is going to throw off people who try to play it like a bullet hell. I don't know if that's a problem, per se.

I would have preferred mouse control or even arrow keys. WASD was really awkward for me.

The graphics and audio work great for the feel and tone of the game. It's slightly abstract, very cyberspace feeling. The one minor issue I saw was that the background doesn't seem to loop continuously; there's a gap in it with empty space before it draws again.

As I've said, it's overall a lot more polished than the prototype status would suggest. The issues are relatively minor, and I think you could tack a score system on it and call it complete.

I went in expecting something a bit different from what I got, but I think it worked out well.

It's rough around the edges, especially in terms of the gameplay, but feels almost like the game is aware of it and tries to head off the worst issues at the pass. There's no real way to avoid taking damage in combat before you get a ranged attack, no real way to avoid getting hit by the boss, and it's a nightmare to try to use healing items in combat, but you have a pretty deep health reserve. Jumping feels stiff and the grapple mechanic is finicky, but there aren't any jumps in the game that require pixel perfect precision. It was surprisingly ambitious; I wasn't expecting to see an inventory or grappling at all.

I think the one exception to this is that it's pretty clearly playtested with the WASD layout and not the arrow keys. I would have preferred actions on the ZXC keys rather than being spread across the keyboard and almost requiring three hands.

The graphics are fine. I'm not a huge fan of this type of pixel art personally, but's it's fairly well executed. The audio that's in the game is good, but it's very sparse musically, and really should have menu music.

The intro feels like a bit of a shitpost, but the game feels pretty tongue-in-cheek overall so I think it fits. Not one, but two truck-kun crushing our protagonists sets the tone (was Isekai a bonus theme?). I think the one thing is that I was expecting something much more serious from the description on the page.

There are some typos and grammatical issues in the dialogue. It does feel weird having a completely different dialogue system in the intro (speech bubbles). The dialogue in game advances too slowly, but it's possible to fast-forward, so it's not a big deal.

The ending is really abrupt. I'm guessing you ran out of time?

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I was shocked by how good this is. The Ascentower and Amai Mahou Shoujo lineage is clear here, but it also really steps things up. It's varied and has depth without being overwhelmingly complex- although serious RPG fans might find it too easy. The narrative is a bit of an excuse plot, but the game is really fun, and the presentation is solid.

It seems to be a pretty long game; I finished up to the end of the second chapter. I have mixed feelings about the gacha mechanics, but it does lean into them in a tongue-in-cheek way. There's some jam game jankiness- some of the UI is clunky, and the art is a mix of very different styles, but the scope and polish had me going "how did you do this in a month?!"

Finally, where did you find music with lyrics? That's an instant +10 to production value right there.

I accidentally skipped the tutorial the first time and died very quickly because I had no idea how to shoot. The ending honestly feels a little over the top.

I'm not super into this type of game, but it seems decently put together. The hats and enemy weaknesses should add some variety to the gameplay, but I'm not coordinated enough to use any of that properly. The ingame visuals are pretty nice, especially the fog/shadow effect, but the UI feels amateurish by comparison.

It's not that I think this specific game should be easier, it's more that I want to see a Song of Morus game that isn't a Hard Game someday. Maybe a chill, narrative visual novel, I don't know.  Just something completely different from your usual niche.

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing; It says I can attack either side, but I haven't been able to figure out how to attack either. I just kind of sit in the middle, try to dodge bullets, and die.

The game also broke HDR in Windows 11, which is weird, but probably more the fault of the latter.

Visually, this is an incredible tour de force. It's bright, colourful, sharp, and appealing. It just pops. Even the menu has neat looking train tickets and spiffy animations. I haven't played every game in the jam, so I can't say for sure that it's the most impressive in the jam. But it's definitely a contender.

The title text in the main menu is a bit crunchy. But that's only really apparent because everything else looks so good.

The soundtrack and sound effects don't come to the forefront as much, but they're still very nice and work very well.

I know Song of Morus are meant to be hard/intense games, but even still, this is a step up on the difficulty curve. It's one of the most disorienting games I've ever played.  The narrow field of view means you can barely see anything else while aiming at the enemy, bullets come from behind you with no warning (at least, none that I could see or hear), and moving around the train snaps your view ninety degrees over. 

The tutorial mentions a wooden sword, but I couldn't figure out how to use it.

I'm sure there are people who can play this, but I'm definitely not in that group. It didn't make me sick or give me severe eyestrain, but if it were longer it might have. Once again, I know what you're going for here, but part of me would really like to see a more accessible Song of Morus game in a similar style.

It's always neat to see Chinese mythology and Hong Kong culture in these games. Some of the dialogue is a bit stilted and could use copy editing, but that feels like a minor complaint.

This feels almost like an educational game. Am I being tricked into <gasp> learning?

It's pretty barebones and could really use some additions to spice things up. Maybe a time limit, moving bubbles, or something else to make the gameplay more varied and intense. More graphics and more colour, perhaps, and some effects when you pick the right (or wrong!) bubbles. Finally, there's no audio at all, and some sound effects and pulse-pounding music (or chill lofi beats for a different feel) would make it pop.

The backstory and concept are interesting, but none of it really comes through in the game itself, which is a shame.

It's definitely prototype-y. The battles feel sticky, for lack of a better word, and it's trivially easy to stunlock enemies. The gacha mechanic is pretty trivial, and I quickly got both unlocks.

It's worth it just to see the zoom-in effect on Trefoil, though, and her thousand-yard stare. In general, the art is pretty good and the sound is functional to decent, it's really the game itself that needs polishing.

This was shockingly good. The art is really nice, and the whole game does a great job of committing to its chosen style. The gameplay seems well executed but I can't really say if it's good or not personally.

If there's one complaint I have, it's that it does feel like the story starts in the middle a bit.

I don't get on well with bullet hells, though, and even easy mode was beyond my limit. I made it through the first level with one continue but didn't even attempt the second.

This one was unexpectedly good. I'm not normally a fan of this kind of retro style, but it's so well done here I'm more than inclined to forgive it. The mechanics are tight if occasionally punishing, and it has just enough story to hook me as a player.

I always get lost in metroidvanias and this one was no exception, but I enjoyed my time in it.

That this is based on a GBTK game is wild, but I gave that version a try and it didn't seem that bad (I didn't play it long enough to see if it got worse later).

Most of the adventure games I've played were built with Adventure Game Studio, which is loosely inspired by Sierra and LucasArts games mechanically. In those, you'd select an item in your inventory, it would become your cursor and you'd click on things with it to interact with them. Interacting with something "out of reach" would usually result in your character automatically walking to it, and then running the interaction as normal.

I definitely get why you decided to limit scope like this. While it feels a bit thin to play, what's there is quite polished, and setting a smaller goal is probably a lot healthier as a developer.

There are some interesting ideas and some great art here, but it's so, so rough around the edges to the point where it's hard to get a handle on what it's trying to do.

The opening scene of the game was a really strong hook that got me interested right away.

Sadly, it kinda lost me as soon as I got in game. I couldn't wrap my head around what was going on or what I was supposed to do. NPCs reusing the same sprites didn't help, nor did what seemed to be placeholder models.

The third-person free-roaming feels like it should have camera controls, but it didn't seem to have them. It felt really awkward, especially going behind buildings.

I managed to initiate a battle of sorts by going to the right; I still don't know why this initiated a battle. I don't know why I'm fighting musical instruments, and it took me a while to figure out I could attack. There isn't really good feedback about your attack range; I know I have an attack range, but there's no visible projectile or effect that indicates clearly what it is. I accidentally skipped through the result, so I'm not sure how the battles are scored, either.

The biggest killer, though, of all things, was the dialogue speed. The type-on effect is painfully slow and can't be sped up or skipped without skipping dialogue. I got the sense that there was quite a bit of story in the text but I just couldn't stand waiting for it. Honestly, if you can't get the quality of life parts in for this effect, it's better to just omit it entirely.

I really like the concept of a magical girl returning to their hometown to find the whole thing FUBAR, and I really like Abby's design and a lot of the other art. I'm hoping this gets polished up a bit to be a bit more playable because there's potential here.

PS: Not sure where to fit this in, but check your texture compression settings on the character sprites. It looks like the default texture compression is being used, with colour blocking visible in game. It's probably worth changing to High Quality or None.

I don't get on with bullet hells well, but I found the first line of the game hilarious. It feels pretty janky overall, but I think the only thing I'd call out as a potential issue is the tendency to have enemies shooting at you from offscreen.

My first thought on seeing this was wow, this is a bold step for the series. I think it has toyed with these themes before, but this is deeper, darker, more real, and more serious.

That line about not being able to go back in particular hits hard.

I love the setting of the ruined dream city. We barely got to explore it in this game, but I'm excited to see more of it.

The graphics, animations, and FacemeltingSolos soundtrack are, as usual, spot-on. I like the mirror effect on the water in particular (being vague, because spoilers).

The UX... it breaks from adventure game conventions and I'm not convinced.. Having to be close to objects to interact with them is annoying, and it isn't helped by June's glacial movement speed. Clicking and dragging items to use them just feels weird, and it's not helped by the pop-in inventory panel. None of it kills the game, but all together it makes it feel awkward and kinda janky.

The hinting on what can be interacted with and how is much appreciated, though, and it feels immediately intuitive without needing explanation.

For better or for worse, my biggest complaint about this game is its brevity. It's a demo, but feels short even for a demo. I'm definitely excited for future updates!

The art is really pretty and the visual style is amazing! Sadly that's about all there is at this point, as you've said it's very unfinished. But I'm excited for future updates.

I like the idea of this one, but the execution kind of feels halfway there.

It feels like it should be a platformer, but at least the first level is basically hold down fire, hold down right. Movement is floaty and the fireballs have no weight or impact to them.

The puzzle between levels is a neat idea, but I couldn't figure out the first one in the time given and that was the end of the game for me.

The graphics on their own aren't bad- I especially like the fox- but the wide variety of different styles clash. On top of that, the red background on the page is eyeball-searing.

No complaints about the music, though, that's an absolute banger.

It's definitely rough at this stage, with a few bugs and visual issues, but I had a lot of fun with it! The balance was surprisingly good, although fast enemies feel a bit overpowered and those were my downfall.

Maybe I'm too much of a philistine to enjoy this, but, well, I didn't. It feels like it's supposed to be high art, but it also comes across as pretentious.

I clicked through it a while, reached a point where I went "yeah, okay, I see what you're getting at", clicked a bit more to see if there was anything more to it, and then checked out.

I don't know if I'd even call this a game rather than an interactive art piece. It's harder to critique art, and like I alluded to at the beginning, I'm not an art expert. At the end of the day, though, this was submitted to a game jam as a game, so that's how I'll approach it.

The thesis seems to be, more or less, that everything is inherently political to some degree or another and that an "apolitical" world is conceptually absurd. I think an argument could be made that the minimalistic styling, linearity, extremely dense prose, and total lack of audio or graphics help drive that point home. It's monotonous, it's boring, it's lifeless, and that's the point.

Unfortunately, that doesn't change that it's a (completely?) linear sequence of dense, hard-to-read prose with no graphics or sound to go with it. It's monotonous, it's boring, it's lifeless. It's not enjoyable, engaging, or even particularly interesting.

And that's the crux of it. It makes its argument, and it might even be convincing for some, but it could have made that argument in a much more interesting way. Making a point doesn't preclude making a fun game. Exploring a theme can be much more nuanced than bashing the audience over the head with it. This feel very utilitarian in a way, very minimal, and there was an opportunity to do so much more with the idea.

Finally, yes, I do realize this could be trolling, or a shitpost. I feel it's better to give the benefit of the doubt rather than make the wrong assumption about someone's earnest work.

This is described as a prototype, and you really weren't kidding.

The game is way too big, physically. I had to zoom out to 50% for it to fit in my fairly large browser window.

The opening cutscene is painful. The type-on effect is way too slow and can't be sped up. Frankly, for a prototype I wish it was just omitted, because having to wait forever is much worse. It's skippable, but I wanted to read the dialogue. The dialogue itself feels like a rough translation, with some weird terminology used. I'm not sure where POV1 came from, and there's a lot of telling rather than showing. I think there are some interesting ideas here, but it's really hard to follow.

Eventually, I gave up and just skipped through the dialogue hoping there would be some gameplay. There is, but it's also super rough. 

It's enough to sorta get an idea of how the game is supposed to play, but it's super clunky and opaque at this point. I strafed around, couldn't figure how to turn, ran into something, stopped, and after a few seconds entered a battle. That was at least fairly straightforward. I did like the UI concept with the buttons near the character. I softlocked it, though, maybe because I tried to open the (unimplemented?) skills menu.

There's music credited, but I didn't hear any. Not fully implemented, or bugged?

The one thing that I can really comment positively on is the art. It's cute, it's bright, it's colourful, it drew me into the game in the first place. I'm not sure if the screenshots shown on this page are in the game but they have a 90s-cartoon energy to them which works great for the genre.

I don't want to be too harsh on this. It think this could be a great game someday. But it's just not there yet, not even close.

Thanks for playing!

It's a bit obtuse on purpose, but there aren't that many exemplar images in the set so you can sort of learn what matches up with what.

It's a neat idea, although I'm unsure how so bad it's good it is. I did have a controller, but didn't have a second player to really try it out with.

Thanks for playing!

This is definitely a game by a dev who likes to tweak for devs who like to tweak, and you're right that it's probably a swing and a miss for a lot of the audience. I like having a meta element to my SBIG entries but I underestimated how intimidating being thrown a bunch of config files and a couple pages of horrible documentation would be (for better or for worse that's something I'm very used to).

I'm curious about the console window you saw. Could you provide a picture or describe it in more detail? There are a few things that could be described as a console window, but none of them should be showing up in normal gameplay, so it's probably a bug.

I liked the MSPaint visual style, which totally fits for SBIG Jam. There are a lot of confusing UI elements- why do some buttons have unexplained icons on their frames- and some things that just don't work, but whatever, it's meant to be so bad it's good, not flawlessly executed!

I do wish you could click once to show dialogue and then again to skip rather than just once to skip. And it would have been nice to have background music. These aren't deal-breakers, but they're definitely weaker points.

Unfortunately the humour really didn't land for me, and given that this game is really centered around the narrative that pretty much killed the appeal for me. I can't specifically point to why it didn't resonate with me; it punches down a bit, and it works off cliches, but I've enjoyed other works that do the same thing. I did finish the game and get what I think was the good ending, but I don't have much desire to play it through again.

Thanks for playing!

The documentation is deliberately bad, partly because I didn't have time to make it good but mostly as a parody of actual bad documentation that one sometimes runs into.

Definitely looking forward to the postmortem!

Shipping without a crucial quality of life feature is rough but it's a position I've been in before.

It wasn't clear that the game would always be completable, but I was also worried about stepping off the critical path and slamming into some game-breaking edge case. As I said, I don't think I could stomach having to restart and claw my way back to where I was.

The ending credits was pretty impressive!

Thanks for playing!

I think I've done another entry that is either going to land on two feet or totally miss the mark depending on who's playing it. It's definitely game by a dev for devs, with layers of technical complexity and a dose of office satire. We'll see if that pays off or not!

I was going for a specific kind of diegetic UI where everything that can be done in the game is accomplished by interacting with an object in the game world, but I agree that being able to mash the keyboard would be funny enough to be worth breaking specific adherence to that paradigm.

The graphics and sound are almost too nice for a So Bad It's Good game, but the gameplay is super cursed. I got to the second level and gave up after launching myself halfway off the screen a few times. The fact that there's no bottom is weird and awful, but hilarious.

That was... well, I was expecting it to be crazy, yet somehow it was a lot crazier than expected. QWOP meets stickman abuse simulators, but with the modern twist of P H Y S I C S. A few times everything exploded and I went flying off the screen. Eventually it reached a point where the framerate dropped to the single digits, which seems like a fitting enough end for this game.

The one gotcha is that it's possible to miss the game completely. The button you have to click to start the game isn't clear, I ignored it, and I thought the weapon selection screen was all there was to the game until I checked the comments.

Thanks for playing!

Choosing to accept all modifiers is the safe option and it's not a bad strategy. I didn't really tweak the parameters from the first ones that sort of worked, but more on that below.

Your music folder setup sounds extremely cursed. One thing I knew that would be a problem was that some people just don't keep music locally anymore, preferring to rely on streaming. It only occurred to me much later that weird music folder layouts would also be a problem.

I agree that it would have been cool to have some "silly" parameters. My initial thought behind exposing everything was that I knew I wouldn't have time to tweak them so I figured I'd just dump that on the player. I started to think about silly parameters like you mentioned very late in the jam, but by the time I did I was pretty tired and more or less feature frozen so the chance of developers burning down the office is the only one that made it in.

Early on I thought about putting in mechanics to prevent players from just sitting there with no devs, but I couldn't think of anything that would work well and be doable in the time I had.

Definitely a lot of charm here, it reminds me of some old Flash projects which is always a safe style for SBIG Jam. Lack of audio is definitely a downside, though. I couldn't be bothered to actually finish any of the tasks; after playing around a bit I realized it was going to be super tedious and I'm not sure there will even be a payoff. Each of the games was good for a quick laugh, though.

That was definitely an experience!

There are some literally familiar faces here, but with new outfits, and it feels simultaneously new and familiar. The outfits, animations, and general character design are peak uncanny valley, and the awful voice acting (including a completely botched line) completes the ensemble. There are lots of hilarious fun little details like how you bend your neck to look at things. The humour is top-notch too, and blends the expected and the totally out of left field well.

Every one of your submissions has been hugely ambitious, and this one is no exception. I can't help but feel you've reached too far this time, though. It's a janky mess, which is on point for SBIG Jam, but possibly because it was pushing it even more or maybe just because of the general design, it has some issues which take away from the fun. The whole thing has the feel of a ship that's about to capsize, which is never a good feeling, and it's compounded by slow, unskippable dialogue that's fun the first time but quickly gets tedious the second or third time around.

Because of this, I always tried to take safe options and feel like I might have missed part of the game. Fortunately, I was able to complete the game, but I don't think I would have tried again if I'd hit a game over or dead end. I did run into some minor bugs, but nothing that ended the run. I might have even hit a glitch that saved the run; I eliminated everyone, but I could still talk to Marvin even after he was supposed to be dead and arrest him.

Another issue I'd file under the "actual issues" category is the camera, at least in the dialogue system. Third-person camera in a cramped house is questionable, but wasn't really a playability issue. The dialogue camera, however, was a really cool feature rendered almost entirely useless because it would always end up behind one of the characters. To be fair this only was a problem for the Marvin dialogues which you really need to see the animations to understand; in the other cases it covered up the animations which is a bit of a shame but didn't affect the gameplay.

I have no idea if I solved the mystery correctly or whether it's meant to be solved- I have my own theory on it- but I did finish the game, I think handle the agents correctly, and got the spiffy ending cutscene.

I'm not sure this is really a so bad it's good game, not because it was bad but because it was pretty good. Okay, it was rough around the edges, with middling graphics and look sensitivity way too high, but it's cute and charming, has a wonderful concept, and even has brilliant little details like the hand holding the protagonist.

I didn't figure out the murder mystery right the first time, but my second guess was correct. I'm not sure how the logic is meant to work, but I'll freely admit I'm not good with puzzles.

This is like Super Monkey Ball, except incredibly cursed. The gameplay is kinda dry, but the aesthetic and especially the audio (seriously, shout-out to the audio, it's some of the most SBIG in the jam) are hilarious, and it doesn't drag on or overstay its welcome.

Sat through a surreal cutscene, spawned into an expansive valley. Turned around as suggested, gate was closed. Talked to the amogus guy beside it. Died. Tried to go the other way. Hit an invisible wall.

Not sure whether that's a 1/10 experience or a 10/10, but maybe for So Bad It's Good Jam that's perfect.

It's an interesting concept, and I was actually super excited to try this one. I'm not sure if this is a game... it's a weird, sanity-draining experience. I think there was quite a bit of potential here, but there doesn't seem to be any goal or noticeable progression, and after a while the charm wore off, the joke got stale, and I got bored.

Well, it certainly has an SBIG feel to it, although the Grimace Shake thing is a meme that's kinda going over my head. I'm not sure if the game is broken or if this is deliberate, but a massive amount of Grimaces spawned in, enough to drop the framerate to single digits. And then I slid over a wall and fell out of the world.