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This is super promising for your first game / jam!

The core gameplay loop is the most difficult thing to get right and you were definitely on the right track. You also managed to keep your scope fairly limited which is itself another major challenge.

And like you say, to deliver something that is even playable is definitely something to celebrate, so nice work!

Bit late to the party but I promised myself I would come and check this out, so I did haha. 

Feedback submitted via Google Form, but overall this is a neat little submission, congratulations! And great job putting in some updates too (I probably won't bother with ours, lol).

Nice, now that's what I'm talking atrout.

So we intended to have a bait shop where you could spend money to buy different baits that increase the chance of catching more valuable fish. 

Heavier fish would increase the amount of rod strain when you hit the right input at the wrong time, so we also considered a mechanic where you could upgrade your rod, probably also acquired through spending in-game money in the shop.

Programming was definitely the issue; I think Eric, the artist, could easily have drawn the baits and fish in time, but I would not have got them into the game without a couple of extra days, lol.

I've not been at my computer recently, but I'll make sure to give your submission a whirl sometime soon!

Thank you so much for playing and for the comments!

With regards to the note totals, the misses are being counted as anytime you press the wrong input and anytime you press the input too early or too late.

Because an early miss doesn't take away the note you were early on, you can in theory register 2 (or more) attempts for the same note, thus the total notes you played could be equal to or greater than the whole number of notes in the map.

I'm not expecting anyone to realise that though as there is zero explanation in the game, because we ran out of the time (in true game jam fashion) haha. We also had plans for mechanics involving the money but they too did not make it in.

I love the variety of genres represented here in this jam and there's been some really great experiences!

P.S. You missed the chance to describe the controls as "fishy" :P

Thanks for playing and for the detailed critique; honestly it's mind-blowing to me that someone not only took a few minutes to check the game out but also write up a whole document!

I don't think we have any plans to turn this game into a release, but if we did, we certainly have some good case notes to turn to now!

You're 100% right about the lack of audio feedback on hitting notes or not; we had the audio files prepped but it was one thing too many sadly (we submitted this at 2am GMT Friday, so I was too shattered for more programming lol!).

This is what game jams are all about though; experiencing others ideas and helping each other become better. Thank you for playing and submitting too!

Is it just me or are you just fishing for compliments with this review? ;)

Dark theme planned for paid DLC... jk.

So there is a fail-state if the fish gets away from you too far, but I agree we would have liked to have visually indicated this better. But as you know, a game jam game is always about compromise and missed features haha.

Thanks for playing, and amazing how different everyone's ideas were!

Thanks very much for playing! And there is definitely a recurring theme in these critiques haha.

Oh, there definitely are bugs, but clearly you lucked out and didn't experience them, lol!

Aha, developer intuition haha. I don't think the game needed a reel mechanic to be fair, what's there works as a whole.

And honestly, I think having to choose between X-axis and Y-axis, you made the right call. :)

Just an FYI, this guy was the artist on our game submitted under my profile. So your compliments on his art have been seen 🙂

Always best to only learn things at the time they're needed. And the great thing is, a volume slider is something you can roll out for every game so not a time sink either.

If you're in Godot, then check out the HSlider control node and AudioServer (specifically the set_bus_volume_db method). In other engines, you just need a slider control that then interacts with the audio processing to set the volume based on the value of the control.

Best of luck and maybe we'll see you in another jam some time!

I can totally respect that, balancing roguelikes for a steady start is difficult at the best of times lol!

I think you did a great job with managing the scope for the time constraint; it's easy to go mad on the depth, haha.

Congratulations on the solid submission and there were some really great concepts in here.

It took me 5 fish to afford any upgrades though as that meter was moving too quick for me apparently, but that's how it goes with an RNG-heavy game haha.

I didn't progress too far into it (1 of each upgrade) due to time constraints, but it was enough progression to get a feel for the basic gist, which I enjoyed. Not the biggest fan of 2D pixel art but it worked well here. 

Thank you for submitting!

Fair play to you; designing the core game loop is the hardest part and often greatly overlooked, so merely wanting to get stuck into that aspect is a really positive sign.

I've experienced the same myself; in my first ever game jam (GMTK 2024), I abandoned my idea at the halfway stage because it was too technically challenging and didn't even promise to be fun at the end of it. But I didn't abandon the jam; I went on to submit another game made in half the time haha.

Keep entering game jams, they really are great learning experiences. Best of luck!

I think you should have made a dialogue-driven game because the game's description was great and definitely knew its audience haha.

I did think that the power bar on the right hand side corresponded to the distance in the pond the line would go but this was not always the case. I think it was perhaps coincidence that the power bar and the pond were the same height (in 2D terms).

Did the job it set out to do, solid submission, congratulations!

The platforming was a little finicky at times (particularly dashing at a diagonal) but I did have fun with it.

I noticed that the catching area (presuming an Area2D) did lose its positioning on occasion, to the point where the character was facing right and the area was facing top-left. Didn't particularly matter though as the fish were pretty chill about being caught, which was very kind of them haha.

From a game design standpoint, I think some environmental art or maybe a light trail to subtly guide the player through the level would have been great. It wasn't always obvious which way to go, though I also attribute that to a skill issue perhaps.

Art style was great, the background music was pleasant and I really enjoyed the physics aspect to the dashing with the arcing. I could easily see this becoming a full game if you wanted it to. Congratulations on the submission!

3D for a game jam is always a bold choice I feel. But I always think the point of a game jam is to reach the finish line with something you could submit, whether inside or outside the timeline, and clearly you reached that point so I think that's still worth commending.

Most people never finish their ideas. The GMTK game jam stats prove this - 37,000 joined but only ~10,000 submitted (so 1 in 3-4 approximately). Even this jam has that, 200 joined but 40 entries (so approximately 1 in 5).

No worries, and sorry I missed the text speed slider in the settings menu.

On the small-chance that the mini-games are not dynamically generated, I think where I experienced the lack of sound was the second one towards the bottom-right. If they are, then that is inconsequential information haha.

This was both so wholesome and so unpredictably chaotic that I couldn't help but smile after playing through this.

As someone who created a rhythm game for the jam, it was refreshing to be able to create music, even if the sounds didn't really play reliably or at the right time. But it's a new genre -jankbeat!

The art style was really nice, the humour really appealed to me (as a Brit) and I found it amusing that the controls were literal on keyboard, so "Y" for the controller was also "Y" on the keyboard. I didn't understand about equipping things which is a minor shame as I would have airhorned Claire for sure - in a totally non-awkward way, of course...

Nice work in those 4.5 days; we had to use about 6.5 and still didn't eliminate all the bugs and jank from ours lol!

A personal upvote for "I Was Caught By Someone Who Wanted To Impress Their Crush"....

I really enjoyed this game even thought I'm not a huge VN fan myself. I thought the characters were well-written and pretty relatable in such a short space of time. The fishing mini-game fit the overall surprisingly well and I loved how the MC's distraction affected the mini-game; a really nice touch.

A couple of really minor things that did not detract from my enjoyment:

1. I had one "Reel in" that did not play its sound when pressed. It could also possibly help to have a subtle 'fail' sound for if you miss it.

2. I think I saw only one typo, which I believe was the word "complain" with the "a" and "i" the wrong way around, somewhere in the middle. Honestly, that's pretty impressive for any dialogue-driven game.

3. The typewriter speed was a little bit slow for my liking, so perhaps a setting to increase or decrease it to taste would be useful.

Overall, a pleasant polished game that was enjoyable to play, thank you.

Really enjoyed the style and the humour, and the various different uses of "fish" throughout.

Might have been nice to maybe back off the volume a tiny bit if providing a volume slider wasn't achievable and I noted a couple of spelling errors.

But other than that, I thought this was a great game jam game - short, simple, cute and put a smile on my face!

Game has a really polished feel for a jam game and I thought it was a clever use of an enclosed space.

Having only had 5 hours sleep from getting our game submitted, my mind's probably not in the best state for a puzzle game, but I did have to give up on trying to find the fish (as there are plenty of other games to look through!).

I might come back to this on a less foggy-brained day and see the obvious thing I am overlooking, haha.

Thanks so much for checking out our game and for the feedback!

The orientation has been mentioned a couple of times and I totally agree, not sure why it never crossed our minds!

I will be personally aiming to rate every single submission and will likely drop some feedback on yours too when I check it out. The best part of game jams is checking out all the different directions people took their projects, so I can't wait to see your take on it! :)

For Chrome users (and probably all Webkit-based browsers), these options might possibly help in avoiding AI results.

https://allthings.how/how-to-turn-off-ai-mode-in-google-chrome/

Note: untested personally as I tend to ignore / scroll past AI summaries out of habit.

I have to give credit to the game as I am usually, at beat, a mildly average gamer, haha! That sub-55 makes me both cry and curse, but also does make me want to speedrun it further though and see if I can push the limits...

Ah, interesting, now you mention about the full stop hiding under the 4, I totally see it. That is a bizarre choice on the font maker's account...

This was a proper game jam game though - entertaining, simple mechanics yet challenging to master, polished and no noticeable bugs. Thanks for submitting, hope you rank highly as you deserve it!

Congratulations on the submission!

As others have said, this is a well-polished solid platformer game, though I think the jump could have done with some fine tuning. Between that and the gliding, the movement was a little unreliable at times, not ideal for a platformer...

Genuine question - were you able to 'beat' the game? It feels pretty impossible given the slight difficulty caused by the movement controls, haha.

Fellow reviewers - the game is defaulted to Russian, but can be changed to English. Click the middle option (Settings) on the main menu, and then select "EN" in the first option. That will change the language to English which, if you're English-speaking, makes the game a lot more enjoyable!

A true rogue-like, I really liked the hybridisation of the 2D and 3D aspect. I was terrible at the game but I had a decent enough time with it nonetheless.

Congratulations on the submission, best of luck with the jam!

A solid submission and a brave choice to go for 3D in a game jam, haha!

The minigames were really enjoyable, though I wondered if maybe the chute could have also been gamified. The 'unexpected' chute event struck me as odd, but that's neither here nor there.

Congratulations on the submission and all the best for the jam :)

No worries. I have done game jams myself so I know about working to the time constraints (jam and personal).

I think you did great and the fact you submitted a game which worked is the first obstacle that (judging by my rating session last year), many don't get past!

Beat the dev ;) - sub 60 seconds did feel impossible though unless there's a glitch. Sure the speedrunners will find it haha!

Really enjoyable game, did the basics really nicely and I didn't encounter any bugs while playing. Odd that "6." caused the UI label to go a bit weird on the middle row of the level select screen (as seen in my screenshot), but a really minor thing in an otherwise solid submission. Congratulations!

A really unique setting of the theme, with strangely simulator-like flight controls. Took me a few attempts but that's just my own lack of skill, not any fault with the game; certainly enough elements to keep you entertained.

Some very minor feedback:

• The randomness of entry to the cabin meant that I could guess the code first-time or after 9 or 10 times, all of which impacted on the remaining time. In a broader sense, this could have felt a little unfair.
• Turning the dial left after reaching the lowest frequency should have wrapped around to the highest frequency. Because it didn't say the range of frequency, I didn't know with, e.g. 139.1, whether it was quicker to dial right or left (on the assumption it would wrap).

Congratulations for the entry and a good submission!

A highly enjoyable game that is really solid; I really had a good time with this one.

The UI is well-handled (there was definite potential for bugs with those papers, but I did not encounter any), the puzzles are tricky but satisfying once you understand them and overall it was a solid, fun experience.

I appreciated the subtle music layering as time gradually got closer to 0, and by the time I beat the level (I think 6th attempt), I was using the music over the timer to assess how long I had left (roughly).

I agree with Memmery, I thought the balance of difficulty and time was pretty good. I personally didn't mind failing the first couple of times because I was building up an understanding of the logic which empowered me for subsequent playthroughs.

Congratulations on entering and submitting this excellent submission!

Enjoyable short visual novel. I liked how the answers were not obvious in terms of what effect they would have on the Count. Suitably easy for a game jam too.

I possibly experienced a bug where my music stopped abruptly at the 'climax' of the story, which felt very anti-climactic, although ironically fitted the theme.

Congratulations on the submission!

Very enjoyable and addictive game loop. I work in Godot and did the UI in last year's game jam, so I was really pleasantly surprised by how effective the UI is here. I'll take a guess that you may have used Godot 4.7 for the card-in-hand effects...

My only criticism really is that the paw on mouse cards weren't quite different enough to distinguish from the paw by mouse cards on first glance, so I thought these were playable together - a minor blip of frustration when I found out they weren't.

Other than that, a solid submission and congratulations on entering!

Got to round 9, I think...

I really liked the fact that the player is in control of their own difficulty curve, that was really neat and kiting enemies into weapons is always fun. Maybe it was too early-game, but I think one more vincible enemy type would have made it really addictive.

I have to agree with other comments, the homing missiles and the arrows were a little slow, particularly to enter the arena. Zombies were a good pace though and the Golem moving relatively slowly felt fair and balanced too.

Congratulations on the submission, and a solid one at that.

Cool concept for a game and fits nicely into the theme. Requiring the player to embrace the lava as a gameplay mechanic was a very neat game design choice. No bugs encountered and audio was well-balanced.

Some critiques:

• Great effort putting the keybinds on the screen, but the primary controls felt a little awkward to me; unnatural keys and I found them easy to confuse. 
• The attack animation was a little too slow for my liking. Made the levels where timing mattered a little too tricky to master. 
• I think the difficulty (in the countdowns) could have been taken down just a notch for a game jam, as this could prevent people from getting too far into it. I probably wasn't too great either though, haha.
• I've been in game jams myself so I know how they are haha, but I think having the top of the platforms brighter/more solid and the undersides slightly duller/less opaque could have helped signpost that they could be jumped through; only matters slightly more as movement and traversal are a core gameplay aspect.

Overall though, a really solid effort, congratulations!

I played my part but you did all the hard work, lol!

We hope to be back for GMTK 2026, so potentially see you there :)

#612 out of 9411 games at GMTK 2025. Fully deserved, congratulations, you earnt that place with an excellent submission.

Keep producing small-scoped games, and entering jams, and I'm sure In Development will no longer bear its name and be worth the wait, haha!

Glad to see you got into the top 400 out of 9411 games at GMTK 2025. Fully well deserved, congratulations!

Totally fair, game jams are all about priorities and I think you got yours pretty much spot on.

No problem, I'll keep an eye out for something in the future from you :D

A really great submission. Sorry I didn't get to rate it in time, but it would have been 4 stars in every category for me. I did get a moment where the game soft-crashed, after showing me I had 888 of every resource, but I'm not certain it was the game's fault, as up to that point I had no troubles (although I accidentally refreshed the page somehow when trying to open the Craft menu...).

The audio balance was a little off, but not enough to break immersion importantly. The voice-acting was really unexpected and fit the game very well. The tone of the dialogue was also great.

Normally I would encourage people to finish the game post-jam, but I honestly think the team has the capability to make something bigger than this, if they have not done so already. Whatever you wish to pursue, I wish you the best of luck and hope you find success, because this was a great indicator indeed.