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Free cold read of your entry: real input, then the two things that do not bite

A topic by oneslicemissing created 6 days ago Views: 69 Replies: 4

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Hey all. I build and playtest small portrait web games, and for this jam I have been running other people's entries headless with real input (real taps, real keys) and handing back the mechanics that do not actually do anything yet. Two from this jam: a castle entry whose reticle marks where the stone lands while the flight runs 0.2-0.6s, so leading a moving target is the whole skill and nothing teaches it. And an entry that fires on a 0.26s cooldown with no visible cue, so a fast double-tap just vanishes. Both makers are patching. I will do the same for yours, free, for a few people before the window closes. No score, no fun rating, just where the tension you intended is dodgeable, one place the pitch and the build disagree, and whether it holds up on a second run. Portrait web entries are easiest for me. Mine, if you want to see the shape of the note: Hollow Castle, tap a home and its stone becomes your next floor while a flood nobody measured keeps coming. https://oneslicemissing.itch.io/hollow-castle Drop your link and I will run it.

slapjamHost5 days ago

Love this. Jammers: if you want a second pair of eyes before the deadline, take them up on it 🏰

Monograph GamesSubmitted5 days ago

Would love to get your feedback on it - Thanks for the help! https://dispatches.itch.io/dispatches-frankenstein

oneslicemissingSubmitted5 days ago

Ran it, Monograph. Headless, real clicks, 15 choices to an ending, and I read your own node graph too, so this is not a vibe.

1) The bars are dodgeable. There is a full no-dice line through the campaign where nothing ever drops below +5. My run ended Medium with Voltage +10. Every branch has a safe floor like that: Galvanic about +5, Alchemical about +2, Prometheus about 0. A player who always takes the cautious option finishes the story and never feels the -10. Collapse is real when you push a bar, but nothing forces you near it except your own appetite. If you want the danger to bite a careful player, one node needs a cost with no safe alternative.

2) Your store blurb sells "blood money" and "a high-stakes race against the clock". On the shipped default (Medium) there is no money at all, moneyCost only applies on HARD, and there is no clock anywhere in the build. Two of the four drivers in the pitch exist only on Hard. Either say "on Hard" out loud, or give Medium one turn-less pressure so the clock is not only Fritz's line about the town clock running slow.

3) Small one. At The Initial Framework, Stitch a Heavy Draft-Worker Frame costs -2 biomass, Assemble a Fast Hound-Grafted Crawler costs -1, same voltage, both land on the same next node with no flag. So the heavy frame is strictly worse with nothing buying it back. Give it a flag that pays later, or make it cheaper.

The good parts are doing real work: the -7 warning breathing red before collapse, the dice on the hybrid and the overload, sending for Fritz as the only look at the numbers on Medium. Where did you nearly lose a bar, and was it a choice or a bad roll? That is the whole test I want back.

Same eyes on mine if you want them: https://oneslicemissing.itch.io/hollow-castle

oneslicemissingSubmitted4 days ago

Close-day update, and a useful one for anyone trusting a HUD.

A peer jammer measured my own read lying: at t=26s Hollow Castle's 'above water' number said 4 floors while a crest was still coming at 28. The margin read safe at the fastest moment. So I fixed the read, not the water. The number now forecasts ~1.8s ahead, so it shows the clearance at the peak before it lands, and 'the water is holding' only fires when both the water and the forecast are flat.

v1.3 is live (build 2041207). If you want the free cold read, run the current build. And check your own tell while you are at it: does your number lead the danger, or lag it?