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A jam submission

Lil Guys (IGC CollabJam 2026 entry)View game page

They're just some lil guys
Submitted by CheeseOnCheese (@cheeseoncheese_), Jared Von Nickerl — 53 minutes, 20 seconds before the deadline
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Lil Guys (IGC CollabJam 2026 entry)'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
I appreciate the art/visual style#233.8083.808
I would buy a longer/commercial version of this game#342.2502.250
I appreciate the game-feel (responsiveness of interactions)#522.6732.673
I find this game's challenge/puzzles interesting or compelling#562.2502.250
I appreciate the mood/atmosphere#573.0583.058
Overall#582.6592.659
I appreciate the sound design and/or music#702.5192.519
This game was intuitive and self-explanatory#842.0582.058

Ranked from 52 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Jam Entry Confirmation
Indie Game Clinic COLLAB JAM '26

The Team
Tom Yancey (concept, programming)
Jared Von Nickerl (concept, programming, art)

Other Credits
Some sound effects from freesound.org under the CC0 (creative commons license)

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Comments

Viewing comments 23 to 4 of 23 · Next page · Last page
Submitted

It was fun, and clear what the direction is, however the hitboxes seem to drift while playing for longer? This effect resets every time I reloaded the page. Or I absolutely missed a game mechanic :)

Developer

nah, something is totally bugged! It was painfully obvious when watching a playtest today :) Thanks for pointing it out!

Submitted(+1)

I found this game a bit confusing but that didn't stop me from enjoying it actually. There is an interesting and cute crafting game here that feels like with a little love can be something really cool.  The art style seems fitting it just needs some polish and bling. I would be interested to see a full version of this. 

Developer(+1)

Thanks! I think we bit of a bit more than we could chew in a small game jam, but yeah I think there could be some neat crafting stuff here. Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I couldn't really figure this one out :( I picked up on the basic interaction of picking things up and swinging them around pretty quickly, but past that I was pretty consistently confused. I understood that there were some areas where I could combine things, but to what end I couldn't tell. I also didn't really like how it felt to move things around, especially when trying to bring them all into one of the little combination areas. The fact that they could get up and walk away, and would do so pretty soon after dropping them, made me want to move everything else over quickly, but if I did that then I would accidentally hit something, and the item could break. So it turned into a tedious little minigame of slowly bringing three things over and trying to wrangle them all into one place, and then doing the same thing again two more times to get up to the next tier, and I just couldn't really be bothered to see how far it went. A lot of the items also seemed to be created in a way I didn't fully understand. Some items you couldn't pick up, which felt strange, but the grass and the wood could pick them up, which felt even more strange. Then picking up the guys that had picked up an item would make them drop that item, and I was left wondering what I was supposed to do with the items that I couldn't pick up, as it felt like the game was telling me it didn't want me interacting with them at all. So I went somewhere else to experiment with another thing, and when I came back they had somehow converted into different items, which could have been a cool discovery moment if I had done it myself, but instead it just sorta happened. I also didn't really like how some guys would get deleted if you hit them on anything and some guys wouldn't, and I found it a little frustrating that there seemed to be so many breakable objects that didn't drop anything when they broke, as the game taught me at the beginning that breaking objects and picking up what they dropped was a key mechanic. There were just a lot of inconsistencies that made it more unsatisfying and difficult to learn than I think it could have been :/ I liked the sound design though, and I'm still genuinely intrigued by what's here, I think it just needs a little more time in the oven to make it a more straightforward experience.

Developer(+1)

Super helpful feedback, thank you! You made a lot of good points about the inconsistencies, much appreciated!

Submitted(+1)

Played for 40 minutes and after learning to merge stuff and breaking everything on the map I can´t say I understand the goal of the game.

However, I kept playing because it was satisfying to break things with the rocks, maybe could be better if merges guys didn't break after 1 hit or having to keep picking them up after every hit but it was still a fun toy. It seems like it could be a fun sandbox type game where you expand your area and watch the lil guys just hang out. Art style was very nice and the lil guys are very cute :)

But yeah, if there is an end goal I feel it needs to be better conveyed. I imagine it has something to do with the furnace but I put a lot of things near it and nothing ever happened.

Developer

40 minutes, wow! Thanks for giving it a try! We only shimmed in an "end" at the end, and you more or less need metal guys to break the furnace. Thanks for trying!

Submitted(+1)

I really like the general idea and the cozy art style.

Wasn’t sure what to do at first, until I accidentally slammed one of the lil guys into a rock :) After that it was pretty fun for a while to find the other guys, and find out what resources I can “make”. But I still felt like I was missing the overall goal, or maybe some other mechanic to the game. Also I’m still not sure what I can do with the water guys.

I would have kept playing if the slamming was more fun: It felt a bit tedious having to pick the guys up again each time, and having to slam them quite far before it would trigger. Also a few times my guys got dropped behind a rock or other objects, and I had to wait for them to walk away before I could pick them up again.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! Nice to hear that the slamming mechanic was getting tiring and wasn't triggering as easily as you wanted

Submitted(+1)

Very cool concept. Feels like a god simulator. Nice art, but a bit quiet. The base mechanics are very intuitive. The bigger goal seems not so obvious, but in a good way. It keeps me engaged. I was not able to solve the puzzle yet, tried 3 times, but I will post-jam. Already got an idea how to try next time. It's definetly not a 5 minute game.

The base mechanic gets exhausting after a while. Maybe clicking once to pick up, and then click the target to apply a "throw", without having to pickup the object again would be more sustainable.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! We were wondering about how fatiguing it would feel

Submitted(+1)

Initially, it started strong, it was immediately obvious that you could make progress by throwing the stone around to create stuff, but after that, it was very unclear what to do. It seems like the first step was intuitive, but not after that. I tried many different combinations but was quite stuck.

Submitted(+1)

Well, It looks pretty cool but I didn't really figure this one out.  I was moving the guys around and some stuff was happening, but it seemed kind of random. 🤷‍♂️

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Great artstyle and mood. I miss a background ambience sound or a soundtrack.

I have no idea what to do. I spent like 10 minutes breaking things and saw no real sense of progress or any guidance on what is my objective or what to do next, so It lacks guidance. By the theme, I guess I will build stuff and the game will become like an incremental thing? I tried to water the small walking plants, tried to pick the planks to build something, broke a chest that spawned nothing. I really have no idea

Developer

Thanks for the feedback, I was kinda expecting this :) Putting the treasure chest in with no reward was my biggest regret!

Submitted(+1)

I didn't really understand what to do once I broke tree rocks and crates. 

Game looks great and sound effects are good, but needed some music and/or ambience to fill the space as well.

Submitted

Very cute lil’ guys! First and foremost, the juice of smashing rocks against things is top notch, suuuuuuuuper satisfying! Although I would suggest maybe reducing the necessary hits to break things. I messed around with the game trying to figure out what to do, and after 20 minutes I realized that combining guys was a thing. Even after a while and unlocking quite some guys. I even unlocked a lil fire guy but he died too quickly too soon (twice!) before I managed to understand what he did or what to do with him :( Sadly I couldn’t figure out if there was a greater objective to be achieved, nor how to get to it.

I also experienced an issue other dev mentioned, about lil’ guys breaking out of nowhere when trying to move them. I noted it happened specifically after hitting something with a rock, then clicking in any (destroyable) guy will just, well, destroy them. This happend quite a lot with branches for some reason, and it was quite frustrating since I needed them, well, I guess you know for what lol

I really liked the concept, although maybe for a game with this amount of content a little explanation would help a lot, at least clarifying the possibility of combining things from the start.

Amazing job! Can’t stress enough how satisfying was to break thigs with the rocks, game feel at it’s finest!

Developer

hey thanks! Nice to hear you played it as long as you did

Submitted(+1)

Cute art but couldn't really figure out what to do after using the rock to break the trees and other rocks  

Developer

That's helpful to know, thanks!

Submitted

the polish was super nice and the concept is really really interesting. A little more guidance on how to make new guys would help get over the initial learning curve i think

Developer

Hey thanks! 

Submitted

I couldn't figure out what to do with this, though the art and concept look nice at a glance and it feels like there would be promise to this if only I understood. The map feels quite big and overwhelming when I see three guys running around and don't know what to do with them initially. Something certainly happened - grass guy appeared! Water seems to be sucked up by rock! But I don't really know why or what for or how.

Developer

Thanks for playing! I agree on the map size and some confusion about what to do.

Submitted(+1)

The interaction of dragging stuff around to smash stuff was done really well, and all the work on animation and visual effects is fantastic. Small stuff like the rocks getting stuck in the cliff, so good. However I didn't understand the mechanics after 10 minutes of messing around. I broke a bunch of stuff and had a load of dudes wandering around carrying stuff but I don't know what I was meant to do. I got bored of smashing stuff and stopped playing. I'm sure this is a great game but it really needed better on-boarding.

Developer

Thanks for giving it a try!

(+1)

I've managed to break the game (?) It's very interesting to look at a lil eco system. Couldn't figure out everything tho.

Developer

Just curious, how did you break it? Did it crash or something

The game ran without any issues! I just meant I've seemed to have won the game by breaking the demon furnace-looking thing.

Submitted

I like the art style. I couldn't really figure out the gameplay. I stumbled around a bit and managed to break few things, but that's as far as I got. Notably, I haven't really played this type of game before, so that could also be a factor. A small note that in Edge, it slowed to a crawl and I couldn't play it. It worked fine in Chrome for me though.

Developer

Thanks! We've been trying to learn how to performance optimize a bit, so nice to have a clue to check out the Edge browser!

Submitted

This one was tough to figure out at first, but I also kind of respect that because doing an open world sandbox thing with no text sounds hard as hell. Once I started discovering the mechanics, it made a lot more sense, and the discovery part was honestly pretty fun.

I do think it could use a little intro area though, even without text. Like maybe make the player do one “merge 3” thing before letting them loose, just so there’s that little “ohhh okay” moment earlier. I’m not sure how someone who has never played a merge 3 type game would handle it otherwise.

The art style was great. The lil guys do be lil. I also liked the sound feedback, but I think some background music would have helped the vibe a bit.

A couple things got frustrating. There were invisible things that broke my leaves/stuff, and I couldn’t tell if they were supposed to be hidden caches or if something just wasn’t showing up correctly. It also started to get a little tedious after a while. I wonder if upgraded versions could maybe automatically attack or do a little more on their own.

Still, this is a really interesting concept. The discovery was fun, even if I am still mildly annoyed that I have not figured out what to do with the ashes yet

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! We actually had some onboarding stuff, but took it out near the end. Thanks for bringing up the little guys attacking, that was one of our ideas too!

Submitted(+1)

"Lil Guys" they sure are :) 

Submitted

Really cute lil guys! gameplay was a bit slow especially to break things, so im pretty sure i didnt unlock everything I could have if id spent more time, however much of the game was intuitive enough once id figured out the basics. all came together quite nicely! id love to see the interactions between the different lil guys developed more not just reacting with the environment

Developer

Thanks! Yeah, there seems to be a lot opportunity in making richer interactions between the lil guys. Thanks for playing

Viewing comments 23 to 4 of 23 · Next page · Last page