This was very charming. I was pretty impressed by the water movement :)
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Sands of Time's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #3 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Gameplay | #5 | 3.792 | 3.792 |
| Sound | #6 | 3.583 | 3.583 |
| Overall | #8 | 3.808 | 3.808 |
| Theme | #11 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Art | #36 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Great game, I loved the music and the retro art style. The puzzles were fun to beat and think about, Id personally have preferred to have the scenes not reset when we change them so it would give more liberty into puzzle solving but it was great that way anyway. Nice entry :D
Submitted
Abyss to OrbitHey, thank you! The rooms not resetting was actually how I was going to make the game in the beginning, but I noticed the boxes become way more complex as you can smuggle many more from one place to another. I ran the risk of instead of having the player read the logs and analyze them, they would just stack boxes and never find out about the double jump and the other "power ups". I also wouldn't be able to have the ability to blow up the boxes, or I'd risk the player blowing up all of them and softlocking themselves. There are ways to solve these problems, most notably not having mechanics like stacking the boxes and blowing them up, as well as being extremely careful and thorough with the puzzles to make sure all the multiple solutions wouldn't prevent the player from reading and paying attention to the logs, but the easiest, safest solution was to split everything in screens (they weren't screens at the start, they were just one big seamless map) that would reset when leaving them. That solution also made the game feel more retro (and more like Animal Well, lmao) so I thought it was the best one. But if I were to turn this game into a commercial one, bringing memory to the rooms would make them more alive, for sure would be the way I would go with.
This game looks so simple but delivers so much joy. Excellent game design - the puzzles are challenging just enough to be a delight to solve, without causing frustration or dragging on. I completed it in one go.
Submitted
Deep Memory MachineThis could be epic. I wasn't able to follow Nemorian lore from its inception in tonight's playthrough, but the music was almost rejuvinating in how it's 90s console vibes, with a ton of incredible unique tunes. I just tabbed back and I got a new one. This alone would rack up the eyeball count on a mobile game.
I really like how, given limitations on pixel count and colours, dude just has to run to the next screen to see the game's continued expression, on a new canvas. I wasn't able to master the block moving mechanic. I know I can jump on them, and throw them, so that is more original than just sokoban. The digging mechanic was great. I said that in another game with it. I loved Mr Do in the 80s and swore to rebuild it ASAP for mobile. I missed my chance here, but games like these carry that flag better than I ever could.
Gotta be over ten minutes of original music here. I detect some tracks get remixed to bulk this out even more. It's fresh and inspirational.
There's so much potential given the framework here: levels (screens) are right-sized, inventory has space and is "alive" to interaction, interesting mechanics, no jankiness.
Submitted
Terry's Trench TrovesHey, thank you very much! The music was all done by Trevor Lentz, I just selected the ones I thought made the most sense with the game. He has a ton of good stuff, and it's all Creative Commons. There is a bit more you could do with the box, some of the notes hint at a way you can use them to gain more height than just dropping them and jumping from them. But I really appreciate the praise, thanks again!
Holy smokes, what an excellently crafted game. The puzzles and the clues are so perfectly integrated into the lore, and every powerup was under your nose the whole time! Love games that do that.
Submitted
BlackBoxOSAmazing game! I was blown away despite the simple graphics and gameplay. I feel like if you polished this some, it would be a real gem.
Submitted
BUN² - Updated versionAn absolutely fantastic game! My first impression wasn’t great, but I kept playing. First, I was surprised by the procedural sand destruction. Then, I was delighted by the water animation. I’m running, jumping, collecting some unclear notes, starting to lose interest… and then I actually read one of them… and oh, how much I had missed! I had missed so many mechanics!
I really loved the game’s systemic nature. The mechanics interact with each other beautifully. And thanks to these mechanics, the gameplay is excellent. It’s not mindless — it’s the kind that makes you think, remember, and analyze.
Special praise goes to the music and sound! The music is simply wonderful. And the sounds… I don’t know if it happened accidentally or by design, but the sounds blend perfectly with the music! And not just harmonically. While jumping around the level yet again, I suddenly realized that the jump sounds land exactly on the beat of the music!
The graphics seemed unremarkable at first, but after playing more, I understood that these are exactly the graphics this game should have. They suit it perfectly.
So yeah, I think I liked the game ;-)
Submitted
Cult ManorThank you very much, I appreciate the kind words! Yes, orchestrating all the mechanics and the level design and notes placement to make them click was fun. Doing it without playtest felt very wrong though, I wasn't sure I was making it too hard or making it too obvious. I also had a ton of other ideas, like a harpoon that would stick to the dirt and work like a grappling hook, which would combo with the box + red shard combo that would create more dirt in some spots for you to hook to. Luckily, I got a hold of myself and did not let scope creep get the best of me.
About the graphics and audio, the 1-bit rule gave me the idea of a retro type of game, one you could imagine running in the old Commodore or older PCs, so I made everything 1-bit-ish, which meant low res with pixel perfect alignment, chiptunes music and low bit sound effects as well. That menu that always shows on screen was very common at the time, even Shovel Knight had a form of these menus with the black background. It was also a good way to make up for my lack of art skills, you can see the pixel art itself is not good (just playing the other games here I can see A LOT of amazing pixel artists) but because everything felt like it belonged next to each other, the game "looked" better.
Thanks again!
Thank you very much! Yes, I've been doing this for some time now actually, hiding bad art and animation behind shaders, particles and other code is a trick I learned, lmao! This game was supposed to have more particle effects, dirt flying off, water droplets and other stuff, but I couldn't figure out how to keep them 1-bit in Godot for some reason. I'm sure I would if I had more time but oh well, we do what we can.
Thank you very much! I was scared people wouldn't figure out the double jump so I kept putting logs hinting at it in many places, but I had a friend tell me they thought the hint was to throw the box, jump on top of it while it's still floating and jump out. I thought maybe if it wasn't a box you could jump on while it's on the ground it could have be more intuitive, but then you wouldn't be able to stack them and climb them but now that I think about it, maybe stacking them wasn't really adding anything to the game? Getting that kind of data is the point of playtest I guess, hahaha
Indeed, have others play your game makes one realize things they didn't think of before, while developing haha. However, stacking them was still good. Having more than one way to solve puzzles gives the game more "depth" ;). Admittedly, I did figure out the double jump by accident XD. But I'm glad I did.
Wow! I sincerely enjoyed my time with this game. Great direction, art, and music! Solving the final puzzle of the game was really satisfying. I always appreciate games that take pixel art seriously and put the extra effort into making it pixel-perfect. The extreme low res style was very charming and it was fun to move my guy around. Overall, great game. Keep up the great work <3
Submitted
Gizmo's Quest for TreasureThanks for the kind words! Yeah, I went to great lengths to make keep the pixels pixely and to keep it 1-bit as well. I did the gamescreen smaller just to challenge myself to make the levels with as few pixels as possible. I also couldn't get particle effects to remain 1-bit, Godot was fading them for some reason and since I couldn't find the setting to make them work I decided to move on due to time. When I played your game, the particle effects were the first thing I noticed, lmao. The water in my game didn't looked good at all because it had no particles, and I wanted to have dirt flying off as you dug but oh well. I'm sure if I keep butting my head against it I'll figure it out eventually.
I had a similar problem on my game! Because I was rendering my canvas at 320x180 I couldn't use any built in primitive drawing or text drawing methods without it looking super blurry and gross lol. Not entirely sure for Godot, but in my case I think it's the antialiasing that's turned on by default for those drawing methods. No way to turn it off using html5 canvas unfortunately... I ended up having to use a weird html5 canvas API that allowed me to copy sections of the frame buffer, and manually tweak pixels, and shove it back on. To get text to work I had to make my own font and font rendering. The lengths to which we will go for pixels... yeah?
Anyway I thought your water was actually really nice. But particles would have spruced it up I agree :)
Criminally low ratings at time of writing for this one, my favorite game I've played so far. Really cute little rule discovery experience. this kind of 2D immersive sim-ish thing is a really untapped mine of a genre I think. (It's also just satisfying to dig holes)
Submitted
1 Minute 100 FloorsOh my god. That was amazing. I’m a big Outer Wilds fan, and this is exactly the game I love. The music is amazing, and the art is very smooth and clean. The shovel and the crystals were super cool tools to learn, and the platforming was good. I did get softlocked once, but outside of that, this game is perfect. I just wish it was longer :)
Submitted
Biologist #13
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