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Thank you for taking the time to play our game! I’ll make sure to play and review yours as well!

Thank you for taking the time to play our game and leave a review!

Yeah, definitely the balance is one place where we didn’t spend as much time as we would have liked to. Originally we intended for the item prices to change depending on the target score of the previous level, but we didn’t have time to implement it (much less playtest it to see how it felt).

It might come in future updates, though!

Overall: YOU HAVE SOMETHING REALLY GOOD GOING ON HERE! I really liked how I was put in the middle of deciding if I should replay a map I already know multiple times (risking failure due to having to do more attempts) or go for a harder map with a power up in order to get the score goal in one go so the THEME IS ABSOLUTELY THERE!

Hits:

• This is a game, alright? A full-fledged game as it is!
• It’s fun to play, although a little bit unforgiving at times, but it makes sense that it’s this unforgiving.
• This a really cool interpretation of the theme. Pretty much every decision you do decides how much risk you want to take (even the paths inside each map).
• Visuals and audio are up to the task!

Opportunities:

• Maybe forcing the maps to switch to avoid players becoming “too comfortable” with a single map could help here.
• If the maps rotate, being a little bit more forgiving could help. Right now, you have to be really precise to beat the Normal and Hard maps.

Overall: It’s pretty bold to create a 2-player game for a jam entry so kudos to that! It’s fun to play, although it’s a bit unwieldy to control the swimmers at times.

Hits:

• It’s really good to see people creating 2-player games for jams!
• The stakes are high and the competition is fun as long as you have a partner to play with you.
• The rules are simple to follow; the controls respond well.

Opportunities:

• Throwing in one or two maps would help introduce some more variety into the game.
• A time-trial one-player mode would also help singleplayers feel welcome.
• Adjusting the collision box of the swimmers will make the movement feel a lot less unwieldy and much more forgiving.

Overall: THIS IS QUITE THE FUN GAME! Really!

Hits:

• The platforming is nice and thrilling.
• The mechanic of dying and using your corpse to move forward always feels nice.
• The layer of gambling your biscuits, although a little bit orthogonal to the main loop does manage to feel rewarding.
• Visuals and sound design are alright!

Opportunities:

• Add borders on the limits of the maps; I died a few times falling outside of the map where I can’t see.
• Maybe implement adjustments to the gambling mechanic so that it’s not too DO OR DIE because sometimes I just felt like taking a little risk, but I didn’t gamble because the price was too high.
• Maybe add secondary biscuits sprinkled throughout the levels so that the most skilled players can go for them and gamble more safely at the price of risking their lives.

Overall: it’s a pretty solid platformer with grappling hook mechanics. The visual style and audio design are pretty good, although the final escape sequence is (IMO) unnecessarily difficult.

Hits:

• Good platforming physics.
• Engaging, and fun to play!
• Visuals and audio are solid!

Opportunities:

• Giving the grappling hook a more “elastic” feel that allows me to gain momentum would feel better and motivate me to complete the game faster (I remember seeing a timer in the end screen).
• I’m sure there’s a strong reason to have a lot of slanted surfaces, but maybe toning it down or using more circular surfaces like near the beginning of the escape sequence would have felt amazing to navigate.

Overall: simple, addictive, fun to play. It feels good to win, it feels really bad when you get a bad roll.

Hits:

• Its simple ruleset allows you to pick it up and play right away; no questions asked!
• I like the way the game escalates. At the end we were taking about quadrillions of points.
• I really liked the fact that as you progress you unlock new slot tiles.
• Audio and visuals are gorgeous! Perfect for this jam entry!

Opportunities:

• I didn’t quite feel the theme here; I think that you can’t realistically lose (or maybe I was just really lucky), so I never felt the risk.
• There’s not a lot I can do to influence the outcome of the slot machines (it makes sense), but from a videogame standpoint I think there’s opportunity to introduce some effects/items/power-ups that you can use to move the scale in your favor.

Overall: THIS GAME IS INCREDIBLY FUN! I only wish the physics simulation of the pinball game were in a better position, but the concept, the setting, and the implementation are really strong! Good job on this one!

Hits:

• The theme IS THERE: you quite literally risk your rent money in order to be able to get MORE money.
• The cat’s messages every time are just TOO FUNNY! It’s an amazing hit!
• The sound design is pretty well laid out.
• The visuals are really good!

Opportunities:

• Polishing the physics will work wonders for this game. Sometimes I feel like the simulation was going at 2X, barely giving me any time to react and other times I felt like the pinball was colliding thousands of time against the base of my bumper. It felt a little bit odd.

Overall: I like the concept and setting of the game; it kinda reminds me of the movie “Turbo”, from Dreamworks. The races are rewarding when you win, but I found it hard to find room to experiment with how little money I’m left with after buying my first snail.

Hits:

• The concept and setting are immaculate. I can see this becoming a commercial idle game by tweaking it here and there.
• The visuals are really good, and there’s enough snail variety to keep the races interesting.
• The detail of being able to go to other people’s games FROM THE PHONE IS ABSOLUTELY CRAZY! Great work!

Opportunities:

• I found it interesting that it’s possible to bet against your own snail; what’s more: I found it necessary to bet against your own snail in the early game in order to win money. IMO, I think that there are two paths here: either the snail training part is taken out of the equation so that it makes sense to bet against yourself, OR snail “leagues” are introduced to allow early-game snails to win and prevent you from losing before even starting (or maybe there’s a third path, they’re just suggestions after all).
• I think that adding a close-up + slo-mo animation when two snails are close to finishing the race at the same time would add some excitement to the race!
• Some background music for the race would have helped feel more connected to the event, but I understand that time constraints are heavy in jams.

Thank you for taking the time to play our game and for writing a review! We’re glad you enjoyed the setting since that contrast was what we were looking for when setting up the map!

We wanted to go in a direction where you couldn’t really explain what was going by mixing the following:

• It’s a bunker
• But it’s raining???
• But you’re playing some sort of computer game
• In some sort of Silent Hill-esque Alessa Nightmare-esque world???

Other settings that we explored involved a more “mundane” approach with the same outcome of being stuck playing the computer game, but we enjoyed the nightmare setting, and we’re glad you did too!

Thank you for taking the time to try our game! Yeah, we definitely “borrowed” that from Balatro hahahaha

Thank you for taking the time to play our game and writing a review! Thanks a lot!

Thank you for playing our game and leaving such a detailed review!

Yeah, the pricing of the items was definitely a place where we had to cut corners due to time constraints; originally, we had envisioned that the items are sold for a fraction of the previous stage’s required score so it would motivate player to beat the score by as much as possible in order comfortably buy power-ups without straying too far from the score goal of the next stage.

Selling and rerolling items is a great suggestion that we’ve heard a few times now and we’ll absolutely include in future updates to the game. Combining them sounds GREAT, to be honest with you so we’ll definitely look into that (maybe setting up a “grinder” that allows you to grind multiple items in order to create a new powerful one).

Thank you for testing our game! Yeah, we definitely toned down the difficulty for the jam entry because we wanted everyone to have a good time playing our game.

Thank you for playing our game and for taking the time of leaving such a lovely review!

Thank you for playing our game and for the detailed review!

Yeah, there were a few things that were left out due to time constraints. We hadn’t thought about showing the dice setup BEFORE the next stage so we’ll definitely look into that suggestion since it absolutely grants the user more influence over the result!

Thank you for playing our game and taking the time to leave a comment!

Overall: a correct jam entry where you have to punch someone else and avoid getting caught. Simple, and straightforward. I liked it!

Hits:

• The premise is solid.
• The visuals are really good.
• The audio design is fine.

Opportunities:

• Adding audio cues for the punches will help communicate the impact.
• I think that making the other girl more aggressive will make the game more engaging.

Overall: THIS IS POSSIBLY THE MOST ADDICTIVE ENTRY IN THIS JAM!

Hits:

• The progression feels nice and it’s fun to just aimlessly shoot the robots.
• This game is extremely addictive. Frequently, I was like “just 10 more levels and I’ll do the review, I’ve played enough” but I just couldn’t let go of it. Great work on that!
• Visuals and audio are fine.

Opportunities:

• The health metrics are pretty much useless; just focus on upgrading damage and rate of fire and nothing can stop you.
• This game has no difficulty? It seems to be by design; I felt the same itch as I feel when I play clicker games so I feel that this game goes into clicker game territory unintentionally. This is my impression so take this point with a grain of salt.

Overall: a simple game, but it just has SO MUCH SOUL, man. SO MUCH SOUL. I love it! It’s incredible! I liked every single second of this game!

Hits:

• Did I mention it has SOUL?
• I love the art direction on this game.
• The audio design was superb! Great work!

Opportunities:

• I could not identify any immediate improvement opportunities for this game! It’s simply EXCELLENT! THANK YOU FOR CREATING THIS!

Overall: YES! I LIKE THIS ONE! I THINK IT’S ONE OF THE MOST FRANTIC ENTRIES OUT THERE! EXCELLENT WORK!

Hits:

• The gameplay it’s fast and thrilling. I loved it!
• The visual style fits the tone of the game perfectly!
• The audio design was great too!
• The “risk it for the biscuit” theme is definitely there!

Opportunities [played the web version]:

• Minor bug fixes here and there with the time counter would have helped this experience feel absolutely perfect. In my playthrough I had to wait for the timer to run out even if I had already met the goal for the mini-game.

Overall: A pretty straightforward game about sheepherding by luring the ghost sheep into the traps.

Hits:

• I love the art direction on this one! It looks great!
• The audio design is generally OK, except for the BGM which was a little bit too high IMO.
• The controls worked well.
• The “risk it for the biscuit” theme IS there!

Opportunities:

• Having a single type of upgrade makes it a little bit repetitive, so I think that having a little bit more variety would help this game a lot.

Overall: I loved this game. It felt great to drive the little car, it was thrilling to try to beat the other car while it was going surprisingly slow but there are so many things you have to do in order to unlock the gate and reach the goal that it makes it so that it becomes this intense battle like in the turtle vs the hare (and you get to be the hare… AND YOU HAVE TO WIN!). It’s a solid take on the jam and I’m sure it will do well in the rankings.

Hits:

• A solid game across all fronts.

Opportunities:

• I couldn’t identify any immediate opportunities for this game. It’s a well-rounded jam entry that matches the theme perfectly.

Overall: The game fulfills its purpose; it’s engaging and getting the cheese feels good. It quickly becomes repetitive as the labyrinth is pretty much the same every time, with only the cheese spawns varying every run.

Hits:

• The art style was good. I liked the nod to Ms. Mowz (regardless of if it was intentional or not).
• The game feels complete.

Opportunities:

• Making the labyrinth change could introduce some variety to motivate players to keep on going out for more cheese.
• Using the obtained cheese as a form of currency would enhance the “risk” factor of the game. Imagine buying buffs from the other mice in the hole.

Overall: A game where you have to randomly pick a chocolate and hope for the best. With a little bit of luck you’ll complete the level and move on; however, there’s absolutely nothing you can do to change the outcome of the game. It’s 100% luck.

Hits:

• The setting is quite good.
• The art is really good.
• The UI is well thought out and it’s very readable.

Opportunities:

• This could easily become a minesweeper clone: you could make it so that there are rules to chocolate positioning, e.g.: “the sweet tooth is NEVER close to a liquor one”, and now there would be something you could do to avoid choosing the liquor chocolate. Imagine the rules of chocolate placement printed at the back of the box and these are different between levels.
• Another suggestion is to make power-ups that allow you to figure out which chocolate you’re about to pick.
• Some audio would have been nice to have, although I don’t think the game needs audio to be understood so it’s OK if it was not a priority for the jam entry.

Overall It’s a videogame that looks great, but I didn’t quite understand how to make use of the stocks system; I played it until the end, though, so it IS an engaging game! It reminded me of “Dragonseeds” from the PSX since you have to input a cache of movements that the combatants will perform at the same time as they try to hit each other.

Hits:

• The art style is amazing. 5/5!

Opportunities:

• The stocks system could be given more prominence; I believe that from a design perspective it is the “risk it for the biscuit” part of the game and it’s not necessary to use it at all in order to win.
• Some audio could help communicate what’s happening in the game.

Overall: The setting is really fun, but I wasn’t able to enjoy the game because the difficulty is too high.

Hits:

• The setting is great; being a raccoon that sneakily steals stuff is really really fun!
• The audio design was on point.
• The visual design was great too! I loved it!

Opportunities:

• The difficulty is just too high. 30 seconds to get 5 cookies means that you have around 6 seconds to get each one which is not enough time, especially if they can move around.
• The controls need polish as there’s one cookie that can spawn in a location that’s pretty much unreachable (in front of the cat, top drawer).
• The yellow highlight of interactable elements in the game should appear from a larger distance to draw the players’ attention.

Overall: A really fun platformer where you play as Alice and have to run from candle to candle so as not to melt. It was a great experience for a jam entry and I’d love to see a framework like this used in a full game.

Hits:

• You nailed the theme implementation. It’s quite literally “RISK IT FOR THE BISCUIT!”
• The platforming feels polished enough to play comfortably.
• The setting, and art were on point! I really liked those!

Opportunities:

• Some background music would have helped set the tone.
• An indicator of where the ingredients are would have been helpful; in one level I went to the left and stumbled upon the cat and it turns out that the ingredient was in the complete opposite side of the map so I had to backtrack all of that.

Hits:

• It does transmit the impression of being a small creature in a big world.

Opportunities:

• The audio design could use some revision as it seems a little bit unbalanced.
• The controls need a little bit more polish since it’s somewhat hard to control the rat, which makes it a tad frustrating when you fall off a high place.
• An indication on where the cookies are could be helpful to help the players orient themselves in the world.

Overall: The game has its juice once you know what’s happening, but the rules are not easy to understand at first. The tutorial attempts to provide a lot of uncertainty, but it would be better if the elements were explained as they’re introduced in the game.

Hits:

• There are interesting rules in the game, if you’re willing to spend the time understanding them.

Opportunities:

• Explaining the rules in a more engaging fashion would work wonders for this game as I agree with some of the reviews in this thread that mention that they don’t understand what they’re doing.

Overall A fun game that 100% complies with the theme of the jam. I believe it’s the closest implementation of the theme that I’ve seen so far! Congratulations on that!

Hits:

• This game is SUPER FUN TO PLAY, although a little bit unforgiving at times.
• The rules are clear, controls are simple, and it’s easy to understand what you should do.
• The visual styles fulfills its purpose, so kudos to that!
• I love the in-between stages shop. It REALLY helps complete the levels.

Opportunities:

• The wildcard cakes might be too punishing and they’re often not worth the risk; it’s better to just stick to regular upgrades and omit them completely which is not good for the experience.

Thank you for playing our game! ✨

The suggestion to allow selling items is something that we’ve heard a few times now so we’ll definitely make it a reality! Personally, I experienced a similar situation of being stuck with bad items in the latest stages of playtesting, but we didn’t have time to code the item selling feature before the jam ended.

Thank you for testing our game! ✨

Yeah, that’s “dice stuck” situation is something that we took into account; you wouldn’t believe how puzzling it was to resolve the additional problem this “re-roll” situation introduced: sometimes, when the dice re-rolled it moved THE OTHER dice due to physics and we had to retrigger the face calculation logic all over again! Fun times!

Thank you for playing our game and providing such a detailed review! Yeah, we definitely agree that the beginning feels a little bit slow, but since we didn’t really include a tutorial we needed to give the players time to “understand” how to play and give them time to use the power-ups before introducing the dice; it’s definitely something we have to improve, though, so THANK YOU FOR THE OBSERVATION!

Thank you for playing out our game! We’re glad that you’ve enjoyed it! We’re looking forward to improving it with future updates so stay tuned!

Thank you for testing out our jam entry! We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed working on it! ✨

Thank you for playing out our game! ✨

Hits:

• The visual design IS GORGEOUS WHAT IS THIS! It reminded me of the Neverhood, Helices, and those claymation videogames that look incredible! IT’S AMAZING! IT’S FIRE!
• The fast-paced platforming feels really well (although it’s a little bit rough around the edges)
• I felt the need for biscuits and momentum!

Opportunities:

• The UI communication is not quite there yet. I think that it could be improved to allow me to understand what’s my current status more easily.
• It didn’t have any sound for me, sadly.
• Polishing the platforming a little bit would transform this into an incredible game.

Hits:

• This game is quite fun, if you’re into puzzle games!
• Simple rules that are easy to grasp.
• Cute art, music, and gameplay experience. It’s quite the engaging experience. It feels incredibly well to reach the end of the level and see that YOU WERE RIGHT AS TO WHAT THE RULE WAS! :)
• It DOES make you think for a little bit. Once the rules are out you NEED TO START USING YOUR BRAIN TO WIN!

Opportunities:

• Being able to “buy” some hints could help people become unstuck in certain levels.
• Instead of breaking the whole level and rebuilding it, it might be worth testing out just destroying the block where you made the mistake and letting the player try again with that same layout for a few tries before rebuilding the level, as this could help ease the difficulty spike.

Thank you for the comment! We’re glad you enjoyed our game!

We’ll keep in mind that suggestion about selling (or discarding) items in the inventory! That’s quite the nice idea to solve the issue of being stuck with bad items!

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING OUR GAME!