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Monchums: Exact Zero's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Artwork | #251 | 4.473 | 4.473 |
| Enjoyment | #1327 | 3.676 | 3.676 |
| Creativity | #1928 | 3.811 | 3.811 |
| Narrative | #2530 | 2.905 | 2.905 |
| Audio | #6792 | 2.284 | 2.284 |
Ranked from 74 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
Exact Zero is entirely about counting down to zero — literally. Every enemy's HP is a countdown you control with math: your monchums' attack counts grow by their function each turn (add, subtract, multiply, divide), and the goal is to land the killing hit at EXACTLY 0. Count down past zero and the overkill damage recoils into your own attacker — so the whole game is steering a countdown to hit its mark perfectly, not just fast.
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
See description for full credits :)
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
Jared Von Nickerl
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Comments
Fantastic polish for your game! Just the Itch Page alone looks fantastic, and even has a nice blend from the background colour to the background side image. Extremely impressive output for four days. Great work!
Could use some music. Felt quite odd with just SFX.
I am not sure if it was a bug, but my guy just wouldn't use his attack and do damage for some reason. Also you can cheese the enemies to have no damage, which may not be the case for later fights.
Huge scope, crazy you made all this! The creature designs are really lovely and distinct and I do love me some STS style pathing. Super big potential for some extremely broken stuff here with the cards, too, upon some balance. As for critique, the cards text cuts off and the cards themselves were quite small (maybe have it rise a little further/get larger on mouseover) and there could definitely be a little more attack responsiveness (stronger SFX, more movement from the attackers, etc.) but what a crazy strong foundation for something really fantastic.
This is really ambitious for a 4 day project, and somehow you (mostly) pulled it off! (My main complaints are the visual bugs that sometimes show incorrect information and a lack of card variety) The application of the jam's theme to the mechanics makes it feel unique, and the art is particularly well made. I appreciate the automatic indicators for what will happen before you take actions: the game is obviously playable before that feature is added, but it's soo important for quickly teaching how the combat system works.
Thanks! Really appreciate the comment, and I agree that the game itself was very ambitious. I have a serious problem with scope creep – and yet somehow I never learn my lesson – and to be honest I don’t intend to learn any time soon xD
I appreciate your listing the few big issues you had as well! We’ll be looking into those asap – in particular the visual bugs with the card text and inaccurate text are now fixed on the current “post-jam” build, which we’ll update as soon as the jam is over. But it’s also valuable to know right off the bat that you felt like the card variety is lacking. We’ll definitely be adding in more as soon as possible.
Glad you appreciated the “preview indicator stuff” that’s honestly where I spent most of my time polishing since I was really worried about all the complexity not reading properly. As is there’s still a lot to improve, but I’m glad that you were able to get the basics from it.
Thanks so much for your feedback and nice comment.
The art work is very impressive, the SFX are good...left the soundtrack! But I think is out of topic, or I miss something?
Hi, thanks for the kind words!! And that’s a fair read – I can explain where the idea came from, even if we missed the mark on staying literal.
The theme sparked the initial idea: each unit (monchum) has a count over its head that’s constantly changing, and originally every count was meant to diminish each turn (the way the Subtractive type still works). From there I thought a cool use of the count would be forcing enemy HP to count down to EXACTLY zero – very much inspired by darts, where there’s a penalty for missing the number you’re counting down to. So in my weird brain logic, “count down” meant landing the count on zero.
It carried into the lore too: a mysterious cosmic countdown is the reason everything is happening – equilibrium and peace only arrive when the count reaches exact zero. The whole game is chaos (+, −, ×, ÷) trying to settle into equilibrium (≡ 0).
So the theme lives mostly in the ideation and the lore rather than the literal mechanics – you’re fair to call that a stretch! But hopefully that explains the intention. Thanks for playing!
It's a good idea and fit with the topic of the jam 😊
Wow. Incredible entry to the jam.
Extremely well polished for the time frame, beautiful graphics, exciting character designs, fun gameplay with cool mechanics. I particularly enjoyed being able to get an enemy's attack into negative numbers and then multiply it to make them do all the work.
Made it right to the end boss then lost unfortunately but an awesome game with a lot of potential for further development. Would love to hear some more sfx and some music
much love <3
Wow, really kind comment! Thank you! I’m glad it hit home for you.
Also cool you found the “exploit” of cranking an enemy’s attack negative as a viable win condition – you’re the second person to mention it. It might see some future balancing, but honestly it’s a fun find, especially because it wasn’t something we consciously intended. The math just allows it, and I kind of love those happy accidents
More SFX and actual music are 100% high on the post-jam list (we’ve decided to keep developing the game, so there’s a lot coming).
Thanks again for taking the time to play. <3
Can't wait to see what you do with it next ;)
Followed <3
I'm really impressed by the character designs!
AMAZING ART! Reminds me of a mix of slay the spire and super auto pets :)
Yeah! Someone else brought up super auto pets, which I hadn’t heard of – I’m definitely gonna check it out. Thanks for the kind commend :)
I must say, the art on this project is really top notch! I really like the cardboard collage feeling the characters all have, its quite unique in that way. And the gameplay twist on this type of deckbuilder really intrigued me. I found that it reinforced the puzzle-y nature of deciding what to use on each round in a way that actually made me want to try and figure out lethal, when on other games of the type I would probably just throw cards out just because.
I did feel that introducing a second chum to the party felt like a slight difficulty spike, because suddenly I needed to remember to also use the new one's attack value. That might be just because I'm tired , and I'll give it another go some time later. Also felt that lacking music took away from the experience but within the time frame it's completely understandable given the complexity of the game and all the assets themselves! Good entry, would love to see developed further!
Had a lot of fun playing it! The monster designs are amazing! I really loved the art style and how you mixed the Pokemon/Slay the Spire formula with the math mechanics. The only small thing I would've preferred is a UI that feels a bit less inspired by Slay the Spire. Other than that, you've got a really solid foundation for a full game. Congrats! 👏
Thank you! Really glad the monsters landed – they were some of the most fun parts to make.
And I hear you on the UI – it’s the part I’m least happy with right at the moment in terms of hitting the unique flavor we want, and giving it its own identity is high on my priority list. I have a few ideas lined up that I’m excited to try there.
Anyways, thanks so much for your playtest and your kind comment.
When slay the spire meet pekemon on a game jam :
Very good game, I quite enjoyed playing it, its mechanics do differentiate it quite a bit from slay the spire (i'm assuming it's the inspo), and fit very well with the theme! So cool :D
Thanks so much! Really appreciate it! Yeah, StS definitely was a huge inspiration – plus other deckbuilders like Monster Train and hearthstone for the juice/effects and UX emulation. Thanks so much for the nice comment, means a lot that you enjoyed it.
This is Slay The Spire X Pokemon. Incredible execution. I think you have some finetuning to do regarding the fonts and text/presentation, but yes this is a VERY fun game to play.
Thanks so much! Really happy you liked it – honestly, it’s comments like yours about how much fun it is that makes me want to continue its development especially because it was one of the most fun game projects I’ve worked on as an artist.
Also – noted about the fonts and text presentation. Lots of bugs in that department we need to comb through! Thanks for your feedback!
Aside from the lack of music. What youve made here is quite impressive for four days! Congradulations! I am a big fan of the character designs you've made, esspecially given they each have distinct shilouettes making them pretty visually varied.
Thank you! Amber and I really appreciate your comment about the character design silhouettes – she and I went to school for character design, so it’s good to know that paid off. Thanks for playing!
Also, strong agree about the lack of music. That will be among the first things we add into the project should we continue its development.
Our team was composed of a designer (myself) and an artschool dropout (my friend aspen). Im not great at character design as whilst I've studied quite a bit of theory I dont have the things that click yet. So Im quite happy whenever I see a banger design and go "there we go!"
So funny that you say that after playing your game I feel like I should be saying the same back to you haha you guys’ submission was top tier :)
very cool! i liked the math card mechanics, and having the health be exactly 0! it introduced a lot of new stuff and strategies as opposed to the regular just drain their health. great stuff!
Thanks! Yeah, that was the first thought I had when I thought of the idea was how the heck am I gonna make this work when in almost every other game you just want your damage to go up, up, up… Felt like we were entering into bizarre territory that you might want to intentionally nerf your damage.
Honestly I had no idea if it would work so I’m glad it at least ended up partly enjoyable. Thanks for your comment!
I played until I beat the boss. Well done! Art style hangs together well. Only confusing part was it took me a while to realize my hand was emptied at the end of a round. I thought my hand persisted, but I'm not sure why I thought that. I've played a lot of Pokemon and Slay the Spire, so this was a very good time.
Really cool you it to the end! I was pretty nervous when we were playtesting it – I was worried all our time designing the boss and elite fights wouldn’t even matter if people couldn’t get past the first few stages – we made some last minute bold balance changes in an attempt to fix it and I’m glad it paid off.
Regarding the “hand emptying” problem – I definitely want that to feel more clear and obvious, so thanks for bringing it up. I’ll come up with something
Anyways, thanks for playing!
Loved it, just missing music for that good game feel/vibes. Great art design! :-)
Please check out my Jam entry too, I just added a trailer. :-)
Interesting game, pokemon and math and slay the spire all put together!
Great game, here's a playtest - almost made it to the boss @01:03:23
Thanks for the playtest and video. Insanely helpful and we appreciate it big time. :)
it is a really fun game love it a lot, great job. you could add a second level, i don't know if its just me but the boss's reset ability is abusive
Haha yes, that reset ability may have been my doing – sorry about that :D. We definitely plan to add more chapters – the jam’s short timeframe unfortunately limited us to one, but we’re definitely gonna add more asap.
Thanks for playing and for your comment!
Great use of the theme and making math fun. Amazing art. Mechanically engaging
Desperately needs music and more sfx though
Yeahh that was honestly something I was pretty worried about – making math fun – early it was pretty damn math equation-y and doing lots of mental arithmetic and it was really boring so I’m glad it sounds like we fixed that up.
And agreed with you on the music and sfx, we crammed the few sound effects that we had in the last 2 hours and it definitely shows.
Thanks for playing!