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Junktail's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Artwork | #8 | 4.841 | 4.841 |
| Audio | #564 | 3.744 | 3.744 |
| Enjoyment | #887 | 3.805 | 3.805 |
| Creativity | #1040 | 4.012 | 4.012 |
| Narrative | #1508 | 3.244 | 3.244 |
Ranked from 82 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?
Junktail is built around a repeating countdown to sunset or an empty fuel tank. Your bike can only move with direct sunlight, giving you a limited window each day to collect scrap, deliver it, make as much profit as possible while growing your space beetle. Every decision costs precious time... in case your profits count down too far, you get FIRED… into the Sun!?
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
Soundtrack by NeuralFold (https://neuralfold.bandcamp.com)
Font Awesome Fonts
BoldPixels Font by Yūki (@YukiPixels)
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
Guilhim & NosbiGolem
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Comments
I played until my game bugged repairing a work station and I couldn't move anymore. I found it fun, but had a hard time understanding the grid system. Overall, I think it has a lot of potential as an incremental game.
I think this game succumbed to feature creep. There are so many different systems that don't seem to impact the game in a meaningful way. Day/night cycle, workers, roguelike progression, items-- any one of these could have made a good game but together they just interfere with each other. Even small things, such as needing to manually pick up fuel after the maggot dies-- it would have been a whole lot simpler if it just automatically refueled your ship. Everything was more complex than it needed to be for such a small game.
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot here that I like. The art is really clean and the juice is really well done. However, the game just has too much going on and fails to motivate me to keep playing.
First of all, and I know this is kind of hypocritical given my entry, but why are we still using the arrow keys as default controls in 2026? WASD has been in use for nearly three decades now.
There's a lot here that seems to have been developed with a different game in mind. A ton of bloat for what it ends up being. Given how short the game is (only needing a few days and a couple of workers) it seems odd there was a whole economy and worker placement affinity system constructed when it would have been the same game otherwise. Just have preset locations for the few workers you end up needing and remove the coins entirely since I didn't interact with them in any meaningful way. They're not a limitation and barely even a requirement, they just exist in the background. The main driving point could have been the stages of the beetle growth and it would have landed the same.
I'm not sure how to feel about this whole submission. Something just feels very wrong about it. A lot was done that didn't serve the game in any way and that's not typically how the priority or even time management structure works during a time limited game jam structure.
I get what you mean with the disconmect between systems, and some of it i think comes from a lack of explanation and balancing of them. I do hope we can tackle thoses issues in the future as we do feel really excited about what it can be. Thanks for taking the time to comment!
very creative with awesome art, good sound, and a nice gameplay loop. it was hard for me to stay engaged after a certain point because there wasn't much motivating me besides the number going up. Still, I admire the creativity and love when devs run with funky ideas.
This game is so cool wowwww nicely done guys<3
Cute and original artwork; the gameplay loop is fast and intuitive right from the start, so nothing negative to say there :)
One suggestion: maybe add WASD controls for movement too? Otherwise, GG!
I think that was my first 5/5’s all across the board – holy moly that was insanely good – such a simple but crafted game loop, really polished, minimalist and intuitive controls, and really stylish and fun characters.
The use of simple mechanics and clever upgrades that felt rewarding was really nicely balanced. It took me a while to figure out what kind of combos felt good and actually started earning me money, but once I did, I feel like I launched off like a rocket. I had a really good time trying to figure it out and barely breaking even but feeling like I WAS slowly making progress. Really interesting concept, cool use of the theme in counting down (bike count, time count, fuel count, day time count, countdown deliveries) etc. Very nice game. Nice job!
Also, these incremental games always get me but I wasted an hour more than I intended to playing this game, but I finally won :)
If I had to make one tiny nitpick it’s that I wish I could’ve used wasd to move as I’m terrible with the arrow keys and the control on wasd would’ve helped a lot.
I had the same control scheme issue, but thankfully you can rebind the movement keys in the main menu.
Impressive work for a jam.
I liked this take on an incremental.
Game is very polished and actually pretty fun! One thing I would love to see changed is when the tutorial is popping up, I have to swap from keyboard to mouse, so maybe a "hold BUTTON for 2 seconds" instead of clicking "Okay" would keep a player a bit more engaged. Other than that, I really enjoyed the game!
The gameplay loop was not something I personally enjoy, but the game is very polished and looks great. A lot of content is there. Well done! A suggestion from my side would be to not give the player too many mechanics/choices at the start.
I really loved how dense the small play area felt, and the art was incredible. It felt so polished and it was a lot of fun to play :)
Great stuff. didnt play till the end, but whats there looks great!
Thank you for the extensive review format! Quite insightful and helpful. You did encounter a major bug there - that lober crewmate was supposed to only have a 5% chance to complete an order when when placed in that grid cell. I really felt your confusion about a lot of concepts came from a lack of correct explanation and expectation setting. Once again, thank you!
Fun game with a nice graphics, a bit repetitive, but still fun.
The only problem: movement on arrows (no WASD override), interaction with objects on E, and you need mouse to select upgrades. Is this game for three-handed aliens?
Visually awesome game!
Portugal? 😲
Siuuuuuu
Woah...full demo in gamejem? 0_o
How?
Impressed at how polished this game is ! The gameplay loop is fun, the visuals are amazing, this feels like a demo rather than a 4 days game jam. Amazing work !
Extremely well polished, feels like a full demo for a game. Great job :D
Wow, this game is so polished, I'm amazed! The art is beautiful, the game loop is easy to understand and very well explained, I see this turning into a full fledged game in the future!!