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Corrected the previous game jam stats - for some reason I  had lifetime stats instead of the first 2 weeks only. 

Rusty Goes to Space had a surprise burst midway through the voting period - Biscuit Battler was listed after 6 months from the first Jam. I don't think that can be replicated.

Further in my point, day 1+2 has the highest views and plays spike - Biscuit Battler got 50% of views/plays in that time period.

Thanks for taking the time to  try out the game - considering your allusion to being "taken round the back and shot" I assume you played a match to the end :)

Thanks for the feedback, you have some really good points. If you accuse Abe of bluffing, you should have the satisfaction of seeing his actual hand, whether you were right or wrong - this would also help you "calibrate" to his play style and strategy. (and also feel less like he is somehow just cheating)

The game currently doesn't distinguish the "strength" of a hand beyond the category rank - whoever gets there first can claim the whole category and the next player has to beat that category (even if your pair is stronger than his). This is another avenue I'm actually looking at to improve game balance - allowing claims within a category.

To your point about "call" and "bluff" - yes, this was unfortunate UI/terminology choice. The goal was to make the options stand out - you can "claim" a hand (whether it is truthful or a bluff), you can accuse the other of bluffing, or you can fold (give up the pot that round). We were trying to lean on the phrase "calling someone's bluff" - and it sounded poker-like. Unfortunately, a "call" in poker is a specific thing that is not this action.

We'll see what we can do to avoid confusing terms. And also try to make a better tutorial (I'm still just elated I got any instructions actually in the game this time lol)

Thanks for the compliments and feedback! I appreciate you taking the time to try this one out. I agree with your statement - it's not fun to be just "fighting over the same pot".  We're thinking through some methods to balance the gameplay so that a leading player doesn't automatically run away with the match, but also there's not a chance to get stuck in a back and forth loop

Nice work! I played through to the end, and the snail was mad at me. (I am a big fan of the bug art btw)

The theme is followed very well - each room is a logic puzzle where the inhabitants give you riddles for you to sort out which doors they do and do not want you to enter. Beyond that, you also need to keep in mind that if they DO what you to enter all different doors, then enter the one that no one wants you to enter. BUT if they all want you to enter the same door (or some want you to enter a door and others don't want you to enter other doors) then you SHOULD enter that one.

Thankfully, the hallway scene works as a great intro and reminder for what you are trying to do. I liked the hallway - the wall variations were nicely done. Sometimes, I wished I could sprint through it, but it was not too long.

Also, movement felt great to me, especially for a web based 3d. I did not feel motion sick, and the camera movement was smooth.

The riddles are funny, and have some pus/wordplay based on the critter who is giving the riddle, and the symbols on the doors were apparent (for the most part) as to what they were for. Easiest to understand was the card suites. Hardest was the explosion symbol. And the most complicated riddles were the fruit rooms.

I really liked the art - the critters were well drawn, and I like little bugs and things in my games. The music was also very nice, sort of a post-rock soundtrack? It actually reminded me of some of the Transistor (by Supergiant) soundtrack.

Hey thanks for the comment, and of course the video feedback! That's actually super valuable, so thank you for taking the time to record and share. I'll dig into the softlock that ended the vid - I don't know why that would have hung the turns, but I did spend a ton of time in the 48 hour grace period fixing race conditions and state machine issues that caused softlocks like you encountered. But I must not have gotten everything :) 

The feedback you gave here and in the video is very accurate. I think the big thing is being more clear about "what" is happening on the screen, who's turn it is , etc. I think there should also be a lot more excitement given to bluffing and calling bluffs. The game just kinda plods along now, and even when you figured out what was happening in the game, the excitement and fun were sapped out. 

I like your suggestions about giving Abe some voice lines and other animations - I agree! That would add so much and make him more fun to play against. And good feedback about the end animation too

To your point about Abe "cheating" - the CPU player has a decision algorithm for its turn that knows the dice in the pool, the dice it rolled, and how many times you rerolled. It has no knowledge of your dice faces. It has a precalculated odds table based on the pool dice to evaluate how "likely" the hand you claim is - since there are only 2/5 dice unknown, there is only a limited set of combinations left, so I could make Abe seem really smart :) However, his decision making is static and can be manipulated or guessed after a bit

It's gratifying to hear it felt like he knew what he was doing - I worked pretty hard on the decision tree. But I think I made him too "strong" a player. 

• I think it would be a fun opportunity for the human player to catch when he makes an obvious error like claiming a hand that isn't possible
• I think he should also be more trusting, or at least dubious, where he tries a few times to get a feel for the odds before calling a player bluff

Also, while watching you play, I realized that Abe bluffs WAAAY more than I gave him credit for. You caught him on bluffs that I would have totally believed. 

Thanks again for taking the time to play and give feedback.

Thanks for giving the game a try! I'm glad you liked the art and music. I'll need to think of a better UI or a good intro tutorial so the game doesn't rely on people guessing, or knowing what is expected of them in poker to make sense.

Thanks for the comment and the feedback! I think you are right about the UI and animations - having those in place would make some of those elements clear and would add a lot more fun. I'm brainstorming ideas to give more choices in play - I think being able to save a die would add a lot of strategy for sure.

Haha I actually got the mayor one (Leichtenstein)! So now I am wondering which other one I missed...

Very nice implementation of Liar's Dice - but with shapes! I took that snarky Rex down a peg or two (after a couple attempts). I'll confess I'm not so good at this variation - when you win, you gain an advantage in knowledge (you have more dice on the table) but the bets are all still on all the dice on the table, so there is no material advantage.

I'm curious how you coded the betting/bluffing logic? Rex seemed to ground his bluffs on what he truly had, and he saw through a lot of mine tbh. 

Very nice puzzler! I like the twist on city-builder. I wish I knew what level of influence a building would grant before I place it. Also, two turns does not feel like a lot of time to balance out this influence. I only had a tie once.

Very nice art! I like the hand drawn style - the buildings and guilds looked all unique - this is an impressive amount of art for a game jam. Overall, very nice game - I'd be interested to know if you plan to continue on it.

Very chill and puzzly. I kept wanting to write my own tweets! 

How do I get uncle eric unlocked from his house?  That's were I got stuck :/

(I'm not good at puzzles)

Hehe I don't know what to put here. I'm impressed how complete this is - the transitions were really smooth, and the creativity is what really stands out. I enjoyed it... I think? 

Very, very nice! You incorporated social deduction and deckbuilding, and actually made it really fun! Every round was like building a custom trust logic puzzle! It got really difficult to figure out the actual imposter when there were two cops at once. My favorite method was stacking drivers to figure out who to mistrust. If only one driver saw an imposter, he could be the imposter! Mark both and see what happens. Watchers were really powerful, but didn't make enough money.

Art and sounds and animations all folded together very nicely. The bonuses from poker-like combinations were a nice surprise too. I think that if you added a bit more content in terms of types of cards, and a bit more control of the upgrading and knowing what the roles + names of the cards were, you could build this out to a full game.

I ended up not making quota at 234/250 - but had just weeded out the last undercover cop

This is excellent! Everything feels very polished - I'm so impressed you had this done in a week. The art and music and fx all go together very well. The rules are quite extensive for a jam, but they make enough sense and are organized so you kind of can remember them once you get going.

I really don't have any negatives to share - I really liked everything about it. I added this one to my favs list to try again later.

lolol this is amazing! The art is deceptively bad, and I love it. I say deceptively because the animations and screenshake are too perfect. The humor is top notch - I especially loved the mayor's dialog and the invisible gun made me laugh out loud. 

I am missing 2 endings though - I have no clue since I think I exhausted every dialogue option and accusation

Thanks for playing through the game! I appreciate the comment too. Ngl, the image of Abe with the gun still cracks me up! We thought it would fit the theme to have him mug you after the game lol.

Thanks for the invite to the server, that sounds like a great community to be a part of. My discord is checkmate.101 (though I may have privacy set to high to be found lol)

And yes, I remember your jam entry from last year too - that was a great one. Super funny and well written.

Nice work on the narrative! The story was really cute and the art fit perfectly. Great job implementing a point & Click - I feel like that is a difficult genre to try in a short amount of time.

As soon as I walked into that [redacted]'s room and saw all the rat [redacted] laying around, I knew whodunit. 

Others mentioned it, but main navigation was a little weird, but I figured it out after clicking around. I actually got stuck longer trying to remember what to press for dialog (E) on that first screen lol

Got the good ending!

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I learn a ton from participating in the jams, especially from all the feedback!

Here's another that I really enjoyed - it's minesweeper with a twist (literally do not trust the Ones). If you like minesweeper, this is a 5 star for sure. I actually make a habit of adding games to favs collection, so I will try not to spam any more suggestions here :) 
/jam/brackeys-16/rate/4947599

This is a very fun one that I found - takes the Trust No 1 theme literally. It is a minesweeper game, so that may not be for everyone if you don't enjoy the original puzzle. But was a 5 start for me

/jam/brackeys-16/rate/4947599

Very excellent troll game. The 3d models are very nice, and it was very creative. The troll that really and truly got me was the floor is (not) lava.

Nice job, it looks super pretty!

Hehe, I found his sock? Very nice game - everything is most excellent. The core game loop is addicting and the loot boxes are very nicely animated to get that dopamine hit.

Hmm this is good to go through, thank you for taking the time. Thanks for sharing the Meier game, I'll look to see what I can learn and emulate from that idea. There are actually 2 different implementations of dice bluffing games here in the jam that I've found that both have slightly different rules - but they follow your pattern in that they are more based on the total numbers of dice rolled vs the combination of hands.

I didn't invent my rules - actually I modeled the game off a variation of Liar's Dice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar%27s_dice#:~:text=%5B3%5D-,Common%20hand,-edit

In my current implementation there are only 36 possible outcomes of the two private dice, and a limited number of hands possible. This was small enough to be easy for a game jam, but probably has a lot of balance issues and lack of combinations. Staying within the confines of these rules, some things I could add would be the ability of a player to reroll 1 die instead of both, or the ability to reroll part/all of the pool dice in certain circumstances, or allow same-rank claims that could be decided by strength of the dice or a kicker. If I leaned a little farther outside, I could implement a larger system of betting that makes more sense outside of reroll, or introduce outside systems like different abilities or types of dice, minigames or cheats to try to distract either player.

You've given me a lot to think about too, in that maybe the premise of this game is flawed - could be good experience in the game jam to take into the next project without trying to turn it into anything by itself.

Regarding the AI - this one was a completely deterministic algorithm, but with the constraint of time I tried to make it as not-stupid as I could, so it looks at a couple different factors based on the probability of the hand, the believability, and the chips at stake. But it is completely lacking any randomness. 

The major flaw is also a lack of strategic awareness - every round is its own calculation. 

If I were to redo everything from scratch:

• Hand definitions would have built in ranking (don't ask, the code is gross)
• Probabilities would be retained in numeric value that can be operated against at a granular level (I precomputed and bucketed possible hands into decision points)
• Personality would have an impact on calculations
• Player behavior would weight certain decisions
• There would be strategic decision making to allow the AI to fold on a bad hand early to get better initial luck, downplay claims to drive up the pot for a good hand, read player intent to bluff.

You are right that there is a lot that can go into it. It's probably pretty clear that most of my wishlist comes back to a good architecture to calculate hands etc. and better balance on how chips are risked in the pot and won. Then interesting decisions can be made when that is solid.

Very nice, and super polished! You guys did good work. I actually won, but it went on a crazy long time (similar to a real-life game). The table talk was pretty interesting. I got lied to once and then pretty much ignored them from then on (after I convinced them to take a hand lol) after that it was just keeping up with who had 4 of what and making sure cards got called before it got to me, until finally I could play at last all 4. Good strategy is playing 4 different cards when you have all 4 of a given. Only got called once. In a non-table talk game, I probably couldn't have gotten away with the trick.

Nice work on the music - the vibe fit very well. Thanks for making the camera shift toggle-able. The look down at the cards was also a nice touch

bahaha thanks for playing through to the end! The comments on the sound and music are appreciated - also the art. Was truly a team effort in both areas.

Appreciate the idea about implementing a twist to the rules! Since the dice only have 6 values (and you only control two dice anyway) the options you have are a bit limited. We started the jam late, but even then we had scoped in pretty much to the core mechanic. I'll try to think of some cool  implementations to change things up - the cheat aspect would have fit really well with the jam theme too

Thanks for the compliments and feedback - being in the same sentence as Balatro is awesome! That last chip can be a bit annoying, especially if he gets a good hand right away, or you get bad luck. I hope it wasn't a bug! Each round should always pay in 1 chip at the beginning, so he should always have to commit at least that, even if he folds right away.

The feedback on the visual queues is good to hear too - I think that would be a good improvement for us to do.

Thanks for the feedback! I agree with the note about the reroll balancing, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I hope you liked the ending animation ok :) we squeezed it in at the last minute. At least when you win, you get a little "You Win!" text lol

Hey congrats! Yeah Abe takes this game too seriously lol. Thanks for the comment and feedback :)

Haha thanks for playing through to the end and congrats! Yes, it seems Abe is an exceptionally poor loser.

Thanks for the feedback on the tutorial. For me, just having any instructions in-game was a step in the right direction compared to my last jams, but I will definitely work on the tutorial aspect for the future!

Also thanks for the compliments and other feedback too!

Hey thanks for the feedback! I did the code on the AI decision script, and I can see where you are coming from. Abe tends to call aggressively if he thinks a certain claim is not "believable" - what this often translated to is that anytime you get a "good" initial roll (like a 3 of a kind even), Abe won't believe you.

It could be that you got lucky and had pretty good rolls throughout, but also his reroll action is pretty noiseless - partly because the dice are far away (lol) but mostly because I should have had a big UI banner that announced the various turns and actions. 

But also your comment on the reroll being broken is probably accurate too - if you reroll enough, you are likely to get the higher hand, but also your bluff becomes more believable on a math standpoint - so a human would see you on your last couple chips and conclude you were bluffing (even without body language tells), but Abe sees you rolled 7 times which makes it more likely to him that you ended up with a Full House :) So you kinda win either way with that strategy.

I'd be curious to compare notes further on how I can improve this, but don't feel obligated.

But thanks very much for the feedback and the compliments too!

Yeah! Excellent post. Try this one: a code review sim, where the developers and the code are completely whacky. You'll want to pass a bad code just to see what happens! 

Was a 5 star game to me

/jam/brackeys-16/rate/4948475

5 stars all the way across. I may or may not have set the office on fire. The steady stream of office humor emails and music was so fun. I'll add this one to my favs and finish it out later.

Nice job of introducing coding concepts without requiring code - also making it more about fun than the code lol.

Nice use of Cyber Security Zero Trust! Was very cool to be a cyber spy cat and puzzle my way through the levels. I think the music was very well done in particular, and the writing was enjoyable too

This was hilarious! I was expecting an Ace Attorney type of visual novel based on the cover, but instead got the logic puzzle. I love the voices, and the theme is spot on as well. About the 4th or 5th crime, I started having second thoughts on if the witnesses were also lying about where they were from.

I played quite a bit of this. I'm very impressed with the creativity. I'm not sure if there is a solution or not. Highest I got was 10. Nice work implementing the theme. The knights were my favorite, lol, good job with the art

No checkmate, you say? Very excellent execution of the theme - seems unique too, so great idea! Does the CPU follow any logic as to when to bluff vs not? It seems to detect obvious bluffs, but not sure if you made it omniscient?

I think everything was top notch! I didn't hear any sound fx or music, so unless that was just my browser, I think that would be the main feedback I have to make the pieces feel like they are making contact with the board, and the button to have a really loud noise.

I've added this one to my favs and will be playing again. Very fun "bluff chess" idea

Excellent work here. I like that you made the game more about finding the cheater than "just another poker game" - very creative. First thing I did was randomly shoot someone lol.

I think the score calculations might be bugged? (unless I don't know Texas Holdem and the house is supposed to win?) but I got striked when I am pretty sure i was right. Anyway, I see that there are the hand rankings in the game, and you need the player to focus more than just the cards that are being marked to make it challenging, but I wonder if players who are not poker-savvy might get turned away?

This is a very difficult memory game. The only way I actually won was by relying on my photographic memory (taking screenshots)

Excellent work on the pixel art and the music too.

I think the highscore is busted and didn't save mine. Anyway, I went the trusty raise the stakes to the moon route and the bots had very little recourse. Took me forever to figure out how to bankrupt the guy in the first round - then I figured out the pot was too big. So I just checked until i won the pot and he finally went 0. 

Plus points for using Dogs Playing Poker, very on brand.

If you don't mind sharing, what was it like developing the various archetypes? I stopped at one bot because it started getting complex and I was running out of time.

So anyway, I started blasting.. all the ones. Nice job! I think taking the theme literally was the right way to go. Zeros of the binary war, Unite!