itch.io

There's a checkbox on the itch page settings you can check to enable the full screen button from itch. I also usually add a full screen option in-game too when I have time to add a menu (usually post-jam).

Thanks! I had previously created a similar car controller for another jam, so I based it on that but simplified it a lot.

Thanks! I had previously created a similar car controller for another jam, so I based it on that but simplified it a lot.

Fun little game!

I was a bit lost until I read the comments as to what to do though. The visual indication isn't very clear as to the buttons being pressed and actually had pressed one without even realizing it. So it would help a lot to have extra visual indication than just the button changing slightly, as well as sound effects for the button presses as well as the gate opening so it's clear when you do things. Two sites that are good for free sound assets like that are pixabay and opengameart.org.

It would also help to have a description on the page that says the controls and objective of the game.

You have to press the buttons then go through the gate to get to the coffin.

You're also not technically legally allowed to use it without paying since it's copyrighted. Whether you credit it or not it's not your music if it actually is the pizza tower music. They probably wouldn't take any action for a simple Jam game, but for next time be sure to find free to use music instead. I found the music for my game on opengameart.org.

Interesting game, but I didn't get very far, there was just too much going on for me. I think it would help if there weren't quite so many crossings of the lines, especially with multiple of the same color and with ere being crossings that don't have a stop. Having sounds to indicate when new items appear or expire and when moving would also be helpful.

Also as a tip, if you can upload a web build as well (I believe Unity allows web exports), that would also help with accessibility and make it more likely for more people to play & rate your game.

When I downloaded and ran it, I got just a black screen. I had a similar issue with another submission, but that was because they were using a custom engine which turned out to have a bug affecting only old GPUs. It's strange that it's happening with Godot, since I use that as well and have never had this issue.

For next time, since you're using Godot anyway, consider making a web export to make it more accessible and less likely to have issues like that. It's quite easy to setup and will also help get more plays / ratings since some people might not want to run unknown executables on their PCs.

Thanks! I had previously made a game with similar driving controls which I based it on (though learning from that I made it much simpler haha).

After the voting period I will probably add either more maps or make the map bigger so there are more areas to explore. I'll be sure to post a reply here to let you know when that happens 🙂

Perhaps I could consider adding an option to allow enabling continuing for those who want it, though this would give a different experience. I wasn't actually thinking of it as roguelike when making it, but I suppose it does have most roguelike elements such as permadeath and upgrades, just not much randomness between playthroughs.

Nice relaxing atmosphere, but I was a little lost on what to do so I ended up just randomly choosing upgrades haha.

It would have been nice to have the option to full screen so it would properly fit in my screen without a scroll bar. I also noticed some of the pop-up text went off the screen without wrapping so I couldn't read it fully.

I'm glad I could help find this bug! If you update it after the voting period I'd still like to try it then so just let me know in a reply if you do!

I do have a relatively old GPU since I typically don't play high end games so I haven't upgraded it in quite a while, and I see there are a bunch of shader errors in the logs. The GPU is an AMD Radeon R9 200 Series, and here is the contents of the log:

https://gist.github.com/Zshandi/042d2e831e58a62a3912ec77b0ad23bd

I'm running on Windows 11 and just got a black screen when trying to play the levels so it was unplayable. The menus showed up so I was able to start the levels, but had a black background if there was supposed to be any colors or images there.

Is there something else I need to do to install it properly on Windows other than unzipping?

It's very cool that you developed your own game engine, but it makes it a bit less accessible when it can't be run in browser and has potential issues like this.

Interesting entry, I really enjoyed the narrative and the writing style, nice atmosphere with the subtle animations and gentle background music The text-based style makes for an interesting atmosphere and also is a good idea for keeping dev time short in a jam.

One thing I think would have made it more interesting is if the dialogue and options changed slightly depending on your previous responses, this would have made for better replayability. I tried playing a second time but was a bit disappointed to find the responses were exactly the same no matter what I chose. This makes it feel less like a game and more like a digital short story / poetry.

I'm guessing this may have just been due to the time constraint though in not having the time to code branching narratives? Or was it intentional and used as part of the story, i.e. the meaning of it is that it doesn't matter what you do you'll always get the same result in the end?

Cool concept and fun to play around with trying different things, but I couldn't make it past the first level.

It might be good to have some clear instructions in the description, including the controls as well as the objective (I assume collecting the squares will eventually open the pink wall so you can get through but I wasn't sure if that was it exactly). There was also the little pebble looking things which I couldn't figure out what they were supposed to do since pressing E seemed to not do anything.

It would help if buttons were color coded / had lines drawn to the elements they affected, and also for the ones which require a specific number of clones would be good to have them count down rather than up to indicate how many are needed.

It would also be good to add some music and sounds, but I'm guessing you just didn't have time for that. I always make it a priority to add some sounds and music as soon as I have something somewhat playable, even if it's just free assets I find online to start (opengameart.org and pixabay.com are two good sources for free assets I've found)

One more thing, it might be nice to have a shortcut to move to the next clone so you don't have to just hold down space until the countdown runs out.

Fun game and cool concept, I like the idea of incorporating the clock as part of the actual game. Also a nice fun art style!

Only complaint I have is that the timer bonus can spawn in the red zone and won't respawn like the stars do, which essentially puts you at the mercy of the RNG gods hoping it doesn't spawn there especially in the later game. Perhaps there could be a better way to be able to push back the time that doesn't depend on this random spawning?

I do appreciate that there's some leeway in the edge of the red zone though.

Cool game for your first jam! I like the concept of the time remaining acting as health too, it makes use of multi-purpose mechanics which helps keep things simple.

Would have liked to be able to move up and down too or be able to aim like in Star Fox though, and also maybe have a way to slow down or speed up slightly.

Sound effects for the lasers hitting the enemy & player, as well as effects like screen shake or freeze frames can go a long way to make the game more satisfying and improve the user experience.

I had an issue where the menu was not fully visible in my screen resolution (1920x1080), so maybe there's a way to make the menu scale to different screen sizes better? (I haven't used Unity enough to know how it works there, as I typically use Godot). It was even worse before I entered full screen. I also noticed there was both the Unity full screen button and itch.io full screen button, so you could probably uncheck the full screen option in your itch page to make there only be the one for Unity.

A couple pieces of advice since you're new to jams:

1. It will help get more plays & ratings if you have a cover image, as well as a longer description. I usually start by just grabbing a screenshot, editing it to the recommended size (630 x 500) and putting the game title over top of it in a way that makes it readable & stand out. You can still update the cover photo and any other info other than the actual runnable upload during the voting period, so it's not too late! If you have time, it's also not a bad idea to make a scene with game assets specifically for the cover photo too, rather than just a regular screenshot.
2. To get more ratings, make sure to play, rate, and comment on others' games, especially ones which have fewer comments, since this makes it likely that they will reciprocate and rate / comment on yours as well.

I'm a relatively slow typer but I still survived about 7 rounds on easy at least (which I found to still be quite stressful), and I found it interesting. I really liked the visuals and atmosphere.

One thing I found a bit frustrating was that if there's just one letter off it's no different from being completely wrong. Perhaps it would be good to have some way of comparing on a per-letter basis so that just being one letter off (including either missing or adding extra letters) doesn't give as harsh a failure as being more off.

Another thing I would note is that in terms of the overall score, the 100% bonus always felt way more important that the time or accuracy values, since even if you're late it still gives you 100 points.

Thanks! I do plan on making updates post jam so I'll be sure to let you know when I do. I hope to add more upgrades and some more areas at least 🙂

Thank you!

Thanks!

Thanks! Yeah I was hoping to add more variety by expanding the map and adding events and such, but didn't have time to. The pizza spawn is technically randomized, but there are so few options I think it might not feel as random, especially when most of the houses need pizza after the first few runs.

I was also thinking it would be good to add more upgrades that are specific to combat too, since that would help give more variety and help out with the later runs getting more difficult after around run 10 to 15 with just the basic upgrades I currently have reaching their limit of usefulness.

Thanks for the suggestion, I might add that in a post-jam update!

Thanks! There isn't audio as I didn't have time to add that but will post-jam! Will definitely make it more varied too, possibly have the platformer be semi-random, and have more variety of games!

For the early submission, once I learned that you can continue to update the games after initial submission, I made it a policy for jams to always submit & upload as soon as I have something playable, so that I don't get caught up on those details at the end and only need to upload the new build. But I still took close to the full jam time to finish it (though I was working for a lot of it).

Thanks! I might speed it up slightly every so many rounds in a post-jam update, and will definitely add sound!

Thanks! Yeah I was debating between adding more games or polishing the ones I had, and decided to do the polish! I also am not too experienced with sounds and it was just me so I didn't have time to add the sounds but definitely will post-jam!

Hi, I added the duck, sorry it wasn't my top priority when I first submitted it, as my focus was on the retro TV part of things, though I did have ideas for the use of ducks that got shelved. It's at the end of the platformer, and in a special asteroid in the asteroid game! This is actually the first jam I've entered where entries are disqualified for not fully adhering to the theme haha. I read the rules too, but somehow missed that part 😅

Only rule I can see that's relevant is no AI, so as long as you know it wasn't made with AI then I think it's fair game :)

If you want to have something "finished" (at least playable and game-like) for the jam then I would say keep it small to start. Some things to keep in mind:

• Focus on the core gameplay loop to start, worry about the menus and other extras later
• Use git/version control from the start, it's super easy to setup, and ensures you won't lose your work. Commit after every change you make, or at least daily.
• Try to get a super simple MVP done first, then add more if you have time
• Once you have something that just works, upload and submit that, even if you have lots of time left. This way, you have everything setup on itch, and have worked out any kinks with the build process, so you're not scrambling last minute to figure out why something isn't exporting properly or isn't working in the web player.
• Upload new version every day or after every decent change you make
• Depending on what experience you have other than dev, don't spend too much time on things like art or sound, especially early on. Make use of free assets or just use simple shapes to start (then you can replace them later if you have time)
• If you like the idea and want to continue working on it, you're always free to do so post-jam (I often do a bit to at least add a bit of polish, and things like menus etc.)

Thanks, I didn't realize we included the console output in the build (not sure if there's a way to turn that off though). We fixed the black screen along with other bug fixes, improvements to the movement and collisions, updated upgrades, and other minor improvements in v1.1 if you'd like to check it out! You can use the web player or download the 1.1 file :)

I've uploaded a separate version of the game, v0.3.1, which has a fix for a bug in the check_move function. Without this fix, the later levels are essentially unbeatable (unless you sort of cheat). Note that for fairness you should still rate based on the jam version, I just wanted to make this available for anyone who wants it with the fix:

https://zshandi.itch.io/code-crusader-v031

I've uploaded a separate version of the game, v0.3.1, which has a fix for a bug in the check_move function. Without this fix, the later levels are essentially unbeatable (unless you sort of cheat). Note that for fairness you should still rate based on the jam version, I just wanted to make this available for anyone who wants it with the fix:

https://zshandi.itch.io/code-crusader-v031

Also, I just worked out that you can use get_tree().root.get_child(0).current_level+1 to get the current level for use with goto_level function (the current_level value starts counting from 0 for first level, while goto_level starts from 1)

Thanks! I definitely would like to do more of a tutorial type things for beginners too, as it's currently more like it just leaves you on your own. I also will try to make improvements to the scripting so that it more closely matches actual GDScript. So be sure to follow for updates, and I'd also love to hear more feedback from you once you do play more!

Thanks! I really enjoyed working on this one, and will probably come back to it soon! There was a lot more we'd like to do with it, such as adding items and other mechanics, improved scripting functionality, and possibly eventually a multiplayer mode! So be sure to follow for future updates!

Also, if you didn't figure it out, we actually left it really open for more experienced users. You have access to any of the methods in the character node, so you can try challenging yourself to see how many ways you can find to break it!

Haha, I didn't realize it actually says when I submitted. We actually took the entire jam to make it. You can submit the game early, and then update the binaries on the itch page right up until the deadline.

I have a rule of thumb for jams to always get the itch page up and submit it as soon as we have something that's at least somewhat playable.

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, sorry I meant to add a note in the description to note the differences with GDscript. I'll make sure to add that!

We would have added for as well if we had time. We thought the repeat would be a bit easier for beginners, and won't be too hard to learn that it's just "for i in range(n)". It was also easier to implement, and you can at least use while loop for everything for can do.

The only thing we're actually using the built-in gdscript interpreter for in terms of the execution is the interpretation of individual expressions, so we had to implement all the flow control ourselves. We could have maybe just inserted the code into a full script to execute that. However, this wouldn't have allowed us to show the code executing like we did.

Thanks again for the feedback and playing the game!

I agree 100% with everything you've said. And I personally don't think it's rambling at all with the paragraph separations, and considering if it were my game I'd appreciate the feedback.

I didn't even realize there was a second section to the staff until the stronger magic/monsters started appearing. And the forest flipping mechanic I didn't realize until near the end, especially since earlier on it just blended with the drawing new cards and as you said it seems like an easy grab to avoid damage.

The tutorial part at the beginning could definitely be expanded upon to explain these. Perhaps the difference in the 2 staff positions could be noted or reasserted after you unlock the first level 4 potion, since that's when it starts to make more difference due to the bottom being limited to 3.

I also thought at first once the gems all greyed out I'd be dead, not at all clear that it revives them with one less until after it's happened once, which really changes the strategies you might employ when almost at the end.