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A jam submission

serious sidneyView game page

Submitted by supermike128 — 3 days, 13 hours before the deadline
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serious sidney's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Enjoyment#1084.1304.130
Creativity & Theme#2174.1744.174
Overall#2263.9223.922
Seriousness#2364.0434.043
Audio#2693.7393.739
Visuals#9673.5223.522

Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Game Engine

GameMaker

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Very fun game, I played it way too much

Submitted(+1)

Also I appreciate the Linux version thanks!

Submitted(+2)

Fun game! I really liked the background and core gameplay, I thought it was very creative. Great submission!

Submitted(+2)

Cool game! The way the world works in this game is very trippy and mindbending which I love! The puzzles are challenging but not too bad! I also love that there are rooms which are just dopamine rooms to collect stuff lol. Simple visuals but it works but a bit more polish would've made it more awesome! The audio is also quite effective to aid on the player's feedback and I would say its quite serious! Overall, really great game and I had a blast! Great work!

Submitted(+1)

That was so cool! I'm happy I played this.

The way that the rooms spin around looks very interesting and the puzzles were also well designed and challenging! Great job!

I will add as a little sidenote that I did get a little motionsick while playing this. Not enough to stop though, if I focussed on the middle of the screen I was fine but the way the walls looked tripped me up a little, my guess is it's just the texture you chose for it that made me dizzy a little bit.

Very nicely done! Great game!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I got to level 10.. had a blast the whole time. I unfortunately did not finish but think I can review now. I'm going to come back to this though tonight to finish my play-through. Easily one of my favorite puzzle games in the jam. I love the music, the warped spin effect, the vibe, and  all of the cobweb/rock/dirt puzzles that were so satisfying to figure out. Especially level 9, the last one I played. I'm excited to continue this.

Submitted(+1)

Really cool game! I was first interested since I saw it had a story, but then it was a plataformer, which it was still cool though. Really cool that the world spins fully, it got me a bit dizzy at first, but I got used to it. Gotta add it to my "play again" list since I didn't finish it, only got to like level 5 or 6 I think.

Also really cool levels 3-4, I was about to leave it there, but those ones gave me a dopamine boost to keep going lol. Good stuff!

Submitted(+1)

Very fun mechanic! The game was also way longer than I expected and I ended up playing the whole thing :) I wish the blue tiles were broken up by a few different designs, since it starts to get weary on the eyes seeing the same pattern when going super fast, and one thing that really hurt my enjoyment is the momentum system on the ball, as it often felt like I was skating on ice, especially so in the levels that upped my speed. Now, i'm not sure if this was intentional to make it harder, but if it was, I don't think it fits well in a puzzle game. A similar thing about flipping gravity, I feel like it takes a second too long for things to fall up/down. Otherwise, very well done entry with fun puzzles!

(1 edit) (+1)

I liked the insurance mechanic.  The is very fun to play, although it does get a little rage inducing at around level 4.  The save points really help out in that regard.

Excellent level design.  Central mechanic is well implemented and fits the theme nicely.  Very creative.  I can imagine speed runners taking to this kind of game.

Good music and sound design.

My only criticism would be the visuals.  A better colour scheme is needed.  Add plenty of visual juice to the game and this could well become popular.  Just search for godot juice on youtube.

Submitted(+1)

The gameplay reminded me of Bounce. A game I used to play when I was little and the POV for this cylindrical view is a very cool take!!

Developer(+1)

i guess sidney might be bounce's granddaughter or something lol. glad you liked it!

Submitted (2 edits) (+1)

Saw this on Spengo's stream yesterday but I wanted to play it myself!

First of all! Congrats on the choice that highlights the game! the cylindrical pov! While it might seem simple in retrospective, i think it's a great choice for delivering the concept really! the parallax in the background helps a lot too. Without it the game could suffer from the Programmer's art syndrome and you totally not only saved it but made the visuals remarkable and rememberable!

The puzzles are very well thought, the sound is pleasent and the art is cohesive. Also i liked the subtle humour the game has.

The only major downsides (Imo) I can think of are two.

I think the game is a bit on the longer side. This as an isolated game shouldn't be a bad thing. But in a Jam context it does end up feeling tiring! And the feeling of leaving a game mid-track is usually a bit jarring! I think condensing the game in 5 a bit longer levels would be the sweetest point.

And the other part, I didn't love the ball movement, it has a bit of a weird mix of mechanics, on one side is not linear enough to be a precision based movement, but is not smooth enough to be a feeling based movement. For example, when the ball is going at high speed to the right and you spin to the left, instead of slowing down first to decelerate, it instantly moves to the left while keeping that same speed. This makes it super hard to handle when you just want to brake or backtrack at high speeds! I want to clarify it's not that bad and the game genre makes it way more forgiving. But I feel it would have benefited from staying on the linear side of the movement or fully committing to a lerp (or whatever the equivalent in gamemaker is) movement!

Also, I think the theme is well implemented, is unique and original enough, while it can be seen simple, I have not played yet another game with this take on spin, so, congrats! :D

Developer(+1)

wow, thank you a lot for your detailed review, i really appreciate it!

for the art, i tried to adhere to the limitations of typical "16-bit" era systems with up to 32 colors on-screen at once and resolution limitations (so tiles/sprites are 16x16 and almost all of them use just 3 or 4 colors, background layers are monochrome, and the screen resolution is 320x240). which was perhaps a bit brutal of a self-imposed limitation in hindsight, but i'm glad it reads as cohesive and holds up reasonably well!

i agree that the game is a bit long. looking back, a few levels less for more varied and polished wall graphics and longer/more music tracks would have been a reasonable tradeoff.

yeah, the ball mechanics are a bit cursed. lerp feels much smoother and less janky (and interacts well with the parallax background scrolling and the cylinder spinning), but it gets annoying when you want to sway to collect a heap of gems or when you try to suddenly reverse course to dodge spikes, so i kinda combined both, for better or worse. could have made it configurable or context-aware, but i ran out of time with the "everything solo from scratch" thing going on and slept through most of the bugfix day lol.

in regards to gamemaker, i actually made the game using gamemaker 8 from 2009 originally for sentimental reasons, as that was one of the first game engines i used when i was 8 years old, and i thought it would be kinda poetic to make my first game jam game using it as well. i then imported it into gamemaker studio 1.4 and then finally into the latest lts 2026 version, dragging the code through almost 2 decades of breaking changes. things hit the fan and i had to manually correct the migrated/auto-converted spaghetti without indentations but i gotta admit it was lowkey a fun challenge :)

Submitted(+1)

Really enjoyed this - super creative use of the theme!

Developer(+1)

thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

Submitted(+1)

Good game

Developer(+1)

thanks!

Submitted(+1)

Incredibly interesting and fun, super cool cylindrical POV, makes for a very unique experience. GGs.

Developer

thanks a lot for giving it a spin, glad you liked it! sorry if i missed any streams in the meantime as i went to bed earlier yesterday, had some debt to settle with the land of dreams, but i'll definitely be tuning in case you're streaming today

Submitted(+1)

I thought the use of gravity in this game was very cool! I enjoyed the game, nice job!

Developer

thank you, glad you enjoyed it! btw, the art you did for your game is so fire!

Submitted(+1)

lol i love the story for this game, very serious drama. The game is pretty fun, i feel like you kinda forget which way gravity is going sometimes, and every once in a while i got stuck on a corner, but you have the reset button so no biggie. not bad dude

Developer

thanks, glad you enjoyed it! and yeah, that insurance company is very generous for sponsoring infinite lives lol
by the way, there's a small easter egg on the paycheck screen when you respawn 100 or more times in a level

Submitted(+1)

idk if this is on purpose but entering level 2 doesnt save automatically so dying on the spikes sends you back to the end of level 1

Developer

it's indeed a bug, thanks for catching it! fixed it in patch 1