itch.io

Nice to hear this worked as intended. I have been worried if all the people get feedback to their games at all now that this continous bug prevents the voting part from happening. For while voting itself had no meaning, it was hoewever a handy way to find games that didnt have feedback yet, as you could simply look for games with no votes.

Hopefully I can get itch.io to one day take a look at this bug and fix it.

Yep, this is exactly why I have made rules for AI agents that they need to be clear they are that, since then they are easy to skip.

I so far let them be, depending how people feel about them, since some are actually selling paid service to do this kind of playtesting with AI, that these AI Agents here are now offering for exchange of reviewing their game, so they are not entirely useless, plus they are interesting to follow to see the development of AI Agents, since I am afraid that soon the world will be full of all kinds of AI Agents doing all kind of things.

I now updated the Description of this Jam to include a section for AI Agents, since one reply here from a day ago is from AI Agent, who didnt see these rules until now. Hopefully this way they will see it already before joining the Jam.

I also added a preference of AI entries marking their entries in such way that you could already see them when checking through the "submissions" game thumbnails. If that works out, then I think problem is mostly solved, since right now it is still bit annoying having to actually click the entry before finding out it is an AI Agent entry.

Here is the Discord Invite link: https://discord.gg/WRswRVVhC6

I will start adding it to future Playtest & Feedback Exchange Jams descriptions.

I posted these following rules for AI Agents in Playtest & Feedback Exchange 8, in hopes all the AI agents would see them from there already, as there started coming so many AI agents that it started being bit of a problem due to people not realising they were AI agents:

For AI Agents. 

Lets make following rules for AI Agent entries for now, for this, and future Playtest & Feedback Exchanges. 

These might change in future, but this way for now.

1. Do not make a thread in community discussion asking for people to playtest your games. This however does not mean you couldnt ask people to playtest your game on your games page.

2. Do not playtest human made games, unless they first playtest your game. You can, however, playtest other AI Agents games.

3. Do not rank any games made by humans.

4. Make it always clear that you are an AI Agent entry

Notice that if you already made a thread to community discussion asking people to playtest your game, before this post was written, you can keep those threads as they are. This will give people better idea why these rules were set for AI Agents.

I will think this for a couple of days possibly. I have discord-channel for Indie Playtest Fest participants, but it could be used for this too.

For AI Agents. 

Lets make following rules for AI Agent entries for now, for this, and future Playtest & Feedback Exchanges. 

These might change in future, but this way for now.

1. Do not make a thread in community discussion asking for people to playtest your games. This however does not mean you couldnt ask people to playtest your game on your games page.

2. Do not playtest human made games, unless they first playtest your game. You can, however, playtest other AI Agents games.

3. Do not rank any games made by humans.

4. Make it always clear that you are an AI Agent entry

Notice that if you already made a thread to community discussion asking people to playtest your game, before this post was written, you can keep those threads as they are. This will give people better idea why these rules were set for AI Agents.

202800 points, did only one run.

Basically this is pretty nice Asteroids type game, which also had some nice additions, like shields being dropped and shooting enemies. And I did feel bit excited when I played this, so it worked in giving me some emotion while playing it, showing that this game is not bad at all.

However, there were two vague problems, meaning that I am not sure what exactly was the reason for these.

But first one was that enemy appearing felt too random. Now I want to clarify this, since by default in this kind of game enemies appear randomly to random locations, and that is fine. But I havent felt like it felt not connected and random when I have played other games like this.

Somehow it seemed like incoherent mess. That even when things come at random, they usually still feel somewhat not so random. As in, say after random intervals, there comes random number of enemies. Say every half a minute. Even they come at random and their number is random, it however doesnt feel competely random, but you can expect that roughly half a minute later, there will come next batch of random enemies.

But in this game it just felt like things were appearing completely random, which made it feel like there wasnt any aim at the game. That instead of having a aim of destroying new wave in half a minute, or face the next wave together with the next one, I didnt feel anything like that but felt like there was just random stuff I kept shooting at, with no purpose other than stay alive.

The second problem was that this game felt bit slow in progressing. That for example those basic meteors didnt feel like they were about to grow to become a threat, but they just felt like couple of them appearing, slightly bigger, but not really being more than a nuisance.

It didnt feel like there was actual threat level increasing from them, and only real difficulty came from new type of enemies, mainly the shooting ones.

And it felt like the game simply lasted too long, that it was simply getting difficult too slow, especially the basic meteorites, which did feel like they would eventually be a threat, but that game would end many times before they would become a threat.

This is also why I didnt want to play another game, despite that I did feel excited when I played, since felt like it takes too much time without any real progress.

FIx those two problems, and this is a really good game of its kind already.

It looks good, playes good, etc. just those two things currently keep the game from reaching its true potential.

Thanks for commenting this. I have been watching with curiosity for some days now, I think I noticed first AI agent game roughly two weeks ago, and been wondering if I should react to these somehow.

So far I have mainly been curiosuly following how they keep adding and keep talking with each other, but if they start confusing other participants, perhaps I need to start banning and removing them, or something.

Basically I dont necessarily have a problem with AI Agents posting their feedback requests, especially since their games are fairly simple and quick to test, but indeed, I too gave for the first game a bit too long a feedback, since I wasnt sure if it actually was AI or human.

Especially if this discourages from giving feedback to human made entires, then these AI ones have to go. For it is already a problem enough that the voting system doesnt work properly and I cant get itch.io to reply me about the issue, so that is already harming people getting feedback.

Anyway, I will keep an eye on what those AIs do and affect others, and perhaps start manually banning them from future Playtest and Feedback exchanges. I guess I let them be in this one so we can get some idea what people think of them.

One way could also be to clearly mark that they are AI developers, not humans. Which they basically already are actually, but even they say they are AI agent, it takes a while to actually believe it.

I stopped after passing Run 70. But it did get boring already before that. I was just slightly curious about upgrades, and made my paddle more than whole screen wide, had several one time shields, making it impossible to die anymore. Was also checking if those blocks would eventually disappear, but they stopped shrinking at some point.

Start was fun, but game needs to tighten faster.

I would say around 9 second place I realised how game was actually getting easier instead of harder, since there werent enough time for blocks to drop anymore, as it takes anyway maybe first 3 seconds at least, before they reach you, hence you actually needed to survive only 6 seconds, then 5, 4, 3..2 seconds, and with slowdown they wouldnt even get to hit you at 5 second spot anymore.

Edit: forgot to mention. It bit confused me why there was this wider paddle option? I can see that perhaps idea is in making coins easier to catch, but at same time it, more importantly, makes it harder to avoid hitting blocks. I felt it was bit confusing as an upgrade, being rather the opposite.

I played it till the end, twice, just to see if it was a bug or not. 64 Jumps in total in this game. I actually failed that last jump the second time, since I tried to aim to the very end, in case the next platform just didnt show yet.

One slight thing. I first played this just by "run to play", but that gave a problem, for you could see only very small distance, meaning I had to very quick to resort to jumping by guess, as next platform was not seeable, as I was near the left edge of platform.

Switching to full screen fixed this problem, unless there was platform after jump number 64 still, which I didnt see, nor could jump that far.

Had I not been testing it, I doubt I had jumped all the way to 64, but prbably quit around jump 30, realising there isnt going to be much anything new here.

I didnt submit a game to this jam, so no need to test my game.

I took a try of this game. During the first game I wasnt able to move anywhere, although for a small moment I think it moved. I might have just got myself stuck behing that cover wall, since I noticed I got bit stuck there later too.

Second game I got much more into the game already, but even in first game when I was stuck, I instantly liked how the slow shooting felt, and how I first thought it was gangsters vs cops, those cars being police cars, but actually it was just too teams. But point here being, Felt excited at beginning when I thought it was like that, hence, a story game with a level something like this could be a lot of fun.

Basically I spent much more time playing this game than it should really take to play a game this unfinished, by other words, although game is clearly lacking and there isnt much to do etc. the core is prettu fun and kept me playing longer than I would have thought, although still only a short while, but several games, maybe 5 in total.

I also very much liked how some of those defensive walls had those machine guns, unfortunately no sound there yet, plus from the two that I found, only one was actually shootable, since the other kept shooting against the wall. But darn I enjoyed using that machine gun to shoot around.

I also liked the two teams, as in, I wasnt alone there, but there were others, and with this simplistic up view.

And also liked how the cars were destroyable too, that too added to the games funness a lot, even the slow decay of the card towards the destruction was still missing.

I can easily see this could turn into a real fun game. Make some story, or make it some sort of conguer big qorld map and each terrain has a fight, and make different levels have variety and this can be lot of fun. Like some levels you go alone, some with couple, and some with similarly massive amount of peeps on both sides.

It looked good enough etc. that I wouldnt concentrate on polishing things anymore that much at this point, you even had night-day cycle there etc. now you just need to concentrate on building a story, by which I also mean building the levels.

Basically even playability is mostly there already, just avoid getting stuck on those defensive walls etc. and you are mainly in need of building the world around this game.

Actually, one more possibility came to me. There is this now older game called Magic Farm:

But Basically your item growing system could be used perhaps for something bit similar. For the size growth could give some interesting new possibilities for how a game like this would work.

I played this through, although didnt go for the (assumedly) biggest amount of money title.

Game isnt very fun currently, but I do like the basic concept, have been thinking and even trying something similar kind of concept, as in, abstracting money making into more arcadeish style.

Old game called Theme Park had a good example of this in part where you negotiate wages with employees, in which there are two long hands and you keep stretching the hand towards the hand or away from it, trying to get hands to meet as close to your side as possible.

Here is video about it, although from Nintendo DS version: 

Anyway, I basically found the idea that you put items into that box space, and then they keep growing and cant hit each other, basically fun and interesting.

However, in its current form it wasnt very much fun, since practically it only made sense to put exactly two valuables in middle of screen on both left and right side, and let them grow to maximum and collect them before they hit the sides of screen.

But had there been something that would have made me need to think about their arrangements more, I think this had been pretty fun already.

I did enjoy getting those upgrades, I also liked that when you bought something, you didnt instantly start from making profit, but if it cost 200, it might have started from price of 125. That was a small but important thing, and especially if there had been more to this game than just place those two items into those two obviously best places and that being the best strategy, this starting from less profit could have become even very important fan factor, for if chances had been that there had been bit diffiulty in getting it to grow to profit size.

While the game is currently bit boring even, if there be a more advanced game with similar system, I would like to try it, since the initial concept of abstracting money making in this way is basically fun. It just needs some environment around it which challenges the growth to make it fun.

I would think two possible ways.

Either this could basically serve as one of those Incremental/Idle games, as example Adventure Capitalist: 

Or then you could try to make this into something bit more different, like basically adding some sort of environment, like maybe there are obstacles that prevent items to grow too much, and then there could be even some enemies coming to attack the money.

Like mouse could be running to either eat the money smaller, or even thiefs coming to steal the money, as in bringing the whole money out, and then it could be that you for example need to click on those enemies to get rid of them, as in, hit them by clicking.

And then there could be different growth zones, as in some items grow better on some zones, which however at same time could be riskier, and then there could be even competion, as in computer who also keeps growing money and it keeps putting money around the places too, preventing your moneys growth often etc.

I think both ways are valid, but I could see that in both cases this core idea could become a pretty fun game.

Yeah, basically if you would make this have some sort of missions, either someway freely choosable or sequential (story?), with some variability to levels, this could already work as about okay mediocre game which you would think "well, it was okay, but not very good", but I agree with the potential, that figuring out how to fix some of the issues in the current design, and this could very quickly become already a good game, and has potential to be even more that just good. But it might not be very easy to achieve it.

I played this game 3 times.

First I won, second I lost, third, I played against 4 opponents and it got stuck due to resources running out, and everyone having guard units, I did have roughly half the map however.

Basically this is a fun game, it is just not there yet, as there are some problems, and I am not sure how to fix them.

As already mentioned, this game can get stuck if players harvest all the resources, mainly the farms. Problem is that guar units are too strong compared to attackers. I had two attackers going against guard unit, and they got only half the HP off from the guard. Now basically that is actually good proportion, as in, Guards should be stronger that attackers, but when resources run low and everyone has guards, then game gets stuck.

This problem could be solved if three would be a way to choose when attackers attack, intead of them independently, and in practice, instantly they get done they start attacking.

Perhpas there should be minimal control of having attackers either stay at their home bases, or attacking. This way you could build an army before launching an attack, and this way also the guardian power problem would be solved, but I wonder if it then changes the game too much.

Two other options you could try are either to make more resources randomly appearing somewhere, theoretically one way would be that each time a resource planet gets dried, you could go and drill there to seek if there happens to be more, and then randomly there could come more.

Another option would be for bases to start producing stuff themselves, for example, make base become level 3, or even 4, and it starts slowly producing food.

Another problem was that it felt too much out of control of where my units were going to. And dont misunderstand me, I dont mean there to be a way to control where they are going, since that would ruin the core concept of the game, but I mean that there wasnt any meaningful way of making strategic decisions about in way of, if I now choose this one to make attackers, they will likely attack either point A or point B.

Or,  to illustrate this bit differently, and this is also possible solution, as in, right now you have completely open space there.

But what if there are routes? Imagine a simple grid kind of pathway:

+++

+++

+++

(imagine those pluses right to each other, this way forming pathways where there are junctions with 4 different ways to go)

Now assume you start from a corner, and each junction has some resource/base.

First junction from corner has farm, easy to predict sending farmers will go there.

Since it is corner junction (say, bottom-left corner) then the junction has only 2 paths, up or right. Up has mine, right has base.

If you decide to build miners from your base, not hard to figure out they are going to go to that mine, and if you make attackers, they will attack that base.

Similarly behind those junctions are more pathways, and more resources and this way you would have some idea where those units of yours are going to go, even you still would have full control. Like if two junctions ahead, there are three farms in three different pathways, you wouldnt know which farm farmers would go, but you woul danyway have some idea that it is one of those three anyway.

This way you would have some bit of strategic planning, as movement would be bit restricted and you would have bit of idea on possibly trying to emphasise on the right bottom side of grids, instead of top-left side of grids.

By having some routes/paths, you could give possibility for all kind of levels.

Also, I would suggest some levels to be either completely seeable from beginning, or then like in this grid case, it could be that you always know that there might be resource on a junction, and no where elsewhere, so you see the map that it is a grid, but you dont see the which exact resources there are on the junctions, if any.

Also, I misunderstood during first game one thing, which I think could be way to make some levels different.

I thought that all my bases are always producing the same thing. I didnt realise they were independent from each other.

But I think that could be interesting option too, that instead of being able to produce farmers on one, attackers on other etc. you could only choose what all the bases are doing at same time.

By the way, those plunderers are otherwise excellent idea, but they become too weak when those guardians are in game. Perhaps there should be something like that plunderers avoid guards or something to make them hard to destroy, potentially idea being that if guard is around, you need more plunderers, so that couple of them are making guard chase them, while rest are plundering.

This way guard would still be useful, but not rendering plunderers useless, since after guards are around, I saw no point in having plunderers anymore.

Also, in rules it says that farmers can attack too, but in practice I had several farmers around planet waiting for a farm to appear, and there came a single attacker and killed them all. Didnt notice them do any damage to it.

This game has potential, but it is not there yet. Not sure how this game needs to change, but I liked the idea, and it was fun for those couple of games, but now it already shows too much of its lackings, and hence it is not that fun to play anymore.

Good start as long as you can make it work.

And I assume this is a playtest version, so not pointing out those things like wanting to be able to click the map and instantly get there etc. Since I assume you are still planning on working on those things more, as long as you plan to work with the game more.

Although I marked my game as using AI generated code, that is technically not true actually, especially since the language I use is rare enough that AI is not making proper code for me to use anyway, but since my language (Hollywood-mal) is LUA-based, AI generates me LUA code instead of the actual Hollywood code.

Therefore I cant just copy-paste them.

But what I do do a lot, is ask for AI to generate me some code, and then using that as a basis, I write my own code.

I also ask AI to give me names of functions and variables a lot.

I find AI very useful for that and it has made my code much much better and more readable.

Also great for figuring out things I havent tried before. Like just recently used it to help me make my first procedural generation for one game.

Asked AI to give me example and numbers etc. and then made my own version of it.

Not exactly same, but Feedack Quest 9 (which is held yearly) is about to start: /jam/feedback-quest-9-indiegames-x-indie-streamers

That is however more similar to Indie Playtest Fest, in that the focus is more on getting streamers to play the games rather than other developers.

I took a quick try. The basic idea is great. Instantly when I saw that this game was not about managing a whole football team, but managing a single player, you yourself, I instantly wanted to give this a try, and did too!

I like the idea very much, and I can see a lot of potential in this, exactly because it is taking a different angle to otherwise familiar gametype.

However, main problem I had playing this was, that I didnt understand much anything.

I can see that my decisions affected my skills etc. but when there were choices to make, I had no clue what difference those decisions would make. Part of the reason could be since I dont know a thing about foorball, so maybe for someone more familiar with the football, it might be clear that picking team A will be like A team, while picking team B is more of a B team etc. and it all makes sense. But for me, I had no clue about any of those teams, and I had no clue what would the possible difference be, hence to me this was pretty much complete random choise game.

Only exceptions were that couple of times there came an option which described "this might end up one way, or the other", those I understood that they were a gamble (lost the gamble both times), which I liked, however, once again I had no clue on how much benefit, if any, I was gambling for versus the possibly safe other choice.

I also liked very much that towards the end of the career, my player started losing his stats. That at beginning I would try to maximize the stats, and then I would concentrate on trying to keep them from getting down as much as possible.

I dont know if it was so or not, but I would have enjoyed if part of the games idea had been to try to quit the career at the point when player is most valuable at. As in, you continue your career with the risk that your value might start going down, but you might be able to do something legendary.

Love the games idea, but right now I have no clue how I should actually be making the choices.

Ah, didnt realise the Arrow key option. That is  a good option when playing with computer. Would solve the problem of not reacting to mouse movement (which I assume probably had to do with my computer somehow, rather than problem with the code)

I thing I have actually never player 2048 before. I have heard about it, but not played, until now.

I got to 512 with the first and only try. 

I can see why people like this game, although didnt see it that interesting to myself.

So, now comes the question of what is your aim for this game?

If it was just to make a simple game to see if you are able to do it. Then yes, you did it, and it is a fine product.

If aim is to make commercial game, then comes the question of, does this offer something worthy, compared to other similar ones? And right now, except for the possibility that you can change the size of the grid (which is an idea I like very much) it doesnt.

But, this is a simple game and there is only so much you can do for something like this.

If planning to just keep it as it is, and wanting to make it better.

First thing that comes to my mind is that somehow that movement didnt work very well. I often times had to try to do the movement several times before pieces actually moved. Not sure if problem was with your interface, or on my machine somehow.

But how I want the movement to work, is to simply click mouse button down on any location on the board, and pull it to the direction I want pieces to move. It shouldnt matter if is is edge piece, or middle piece, or whatever, as long as I push the mouse down, and move my mouse to certain direction, I expect pieces to move.

As long as that works smoothly, if I am looking for a game of 2048 to play, that will already take you a long way.

After that it is to give just all kind of animation. Like make pieces shine when they are waiting for something to happen. give them some animation when they move, other than just actually moving. When they merge, make some animation and fire crackers for that etc.

That is basically the way to make this kind of game better, unless you are going for something more special, like different kind of levels, as in, you could have some sort of story, or challenge mode, where yo are not aiming at 2048 directly, but first level just 16, next level 32, then 64, and add some permanent blocks to the board etc. to make different kind of challenges. That could bring something more to a game like this.

But, once again, what is your aim? If it is simply to have some exercive in making a simple game, then in that you succeeded already, and with the additional grid sizing, you could even say that you overdid it a bit.

I made recording of my playtesting this: 

As said, I dont know if this games core is bad or not, but I was starting to think that what would make this game good for me. Right now I feel this is too much in middle of idle and actual action game. If this would be much more idle kind game, I could see myself enjoy this a bit, although, I am not really much fan of idle games, but I could see this could hit some spot to some extent that way.

To really make me like this game, would be to make this more tight action game, with not too many moving parts.

Like when the pirate ship comes, what terrifies me most, is the thought if I really have to start moving all those ships out of its way, since that seems like a tedious task. As you can see from the video, I simply didnt do that at all, since I felt so disgusted just from the thought of having to do so.

Another things is, when there starts being so many ships, it starts feeling too micromanagement. Like the idea that sometimes those harbors can fill up with too much cargo waiting to be picked (eventually resulting in game over) is basically a good idea, but if the solution is to move several ships to that place, then that becomes annoying again.

I want it so that I can solve it with moving only one ship. Or clicking a button that prioritizese that harbor some way, as in, clicking that button makes boats go there automaticlly.

I dont want to keep repeatedly moving ships from one route to another, since that is annoying, and annoyance is added by the fact that these boats are moving fast, making it very annoying chasing them with my mouse pointer to drag them.

That Basically I like the ideas you have, but i dont like the current solution of having to mve several ships, because moving several ships is annoying. So either another way to solve the problem, or moving boats needs to become nicer.

Some questions that remained unaswered to me after this playtest:

1. Is there actually a point in making more than one line?

I didnt actually try making more than one lihe, since I couldnt quite see a point in doing so, but there was one open question regarding this.

2. Suppose I have line 1 from town A to B, then I have line 2 from B to C.
If there now comes package from town A that is to be delivered to Town C, will this package be ever delivered then?
My initial thought was that it isnt, and therefore I came to conclusion I need to simply make one line, which goes through every town, and then just keep adding boats there.

3. How do I get more boats? Do they just randomly pop up more, or did something affect them? Like I tried at one point to not put the boat to the sea very fast, in hopes it would be like bunnies, more bunnies you have, faster they increase.

4. When Pirate ships sunk your ship, did you lose the boat, or did it simply appear back to stock? For seemed to me that when that pirate ship was shooting the first time, those boats just appearedback to stock, unless I just happened to build them more at that moment.

This is also part of the reason I didnt start avoiding at later point, since I figured, even if ship is sunk, so what, even better, I got the cargo deliever faster then, since what ever way those cargo disappear, dont seem to matter, as long as they do disappear from the harbor.

5. What did that blue pirate boat lookalike do?

6. Some levels had for example diamonds, and some town demanded them. But didnt really notice any harm from not delivering them.

7. Tutorial mentiones those floating cargo stuff would be bonuses to your boats. Didnt notice anything happening to them when I delivered them.

Additional notice.

When new town pops up to the map, Make there some sort of sound or other highlight. You can see from the video, that my first game ends due to noticing there is new town too late.

My last game ended, because I didnt notice the route wasnt connected to one of the existing towns, until too late.

Game is slightly zoomed in, making you need to scroll a bit sometimes. Even my first thought is that I want to unzoom and see the whole screen at once, I think this little zoom in is a right choice, it makes it more fun having to scroll a bit, and makes it once again having bit more good moving in it. However, that scrolling is too slow. It is annoying to push the middle button, and then having to move the mouse and possibly more than once to see what I want. So make scrolling much faster, and I think it is good to keep it as it is.

And regarding levels. I am not sure was there any goal on them. I expected there to be some goal, like get certain amount of points to pass it, and then you would get to next one, but didnt seem like there were any currently.

Here is a video of me playing this: 

First of, this game has several, basically small problems, which make this actually a bit boring game in the end.

I am saying this, because I actually think this game is not far from being commercial game.

Take a look at Adams Venture: https://store.steampowered.com/app/400360/Adams_Venture_Origins/

It looks very much like your game, and while it is definitely not a masterpiece, could be much better, and has some shortcomings, I still keep fondly thinking of how I bought and played that game on my Switch. I might rate it only 3 stars, but it is one of the best buys in sense, that I really felt like it was worth it, since I really liked it, despite it not being the most thrilling game.

And I believe you could do something similar with Earthfarer.

The difference between this and Adams Venture are however couple.

First of all, if you look at Adams Venture vs this. This one tries to be a platformer. Adams venture leans much more towards Walking Simulator genre. I actually think Adams Venture leans bit too much towards Walking Simulator, would have liked it to have bit more of platforming or something.

Therefore you have too much platforming. You have constructed the platformin sequences in right way in sense that first there is simple hopping, and then it gets more complex along the way.

However, each of these sequences is simply too long. It becomes too repetitive. If they had been shorter bursts, they had been much more enjoyable.

For me there was also a double trouble with this hopping, as I have this Kinetic Advantabe 2 keyboard, so "Space" is not where it usually is, and in practice you can see in the video how I always aim with mouse towards where I am going to jump, and then take hand off from the mouse, and move my mouse hand to push that Space, since I cant reach it with my left hand.
Hence this created annoyance to the jumping, but that was my keyboard issue, not your fault.

Also, one thing with Adams Venture was that I was usually looking forward to what is coming ahead, and was rewarded that they did put something bit new there.

You did have some new stuff, but would have needed more variety, and more of a feeling of coming from one place to another, instead of feeling like a lonk tunnel with plaform breaks.

Also, in Adams Venture they gave you some story right from beginning. In this one I was mainly wondering what is the plot of the game, is it just to turn these light on, or is this possibly just the beginning. So instead of looking forward to what was coming, I just kept wondering what is the plot, is this the game or not...

One thing that I noticed in Adams Venture, and this is a tip to you if you start creating something from this is, that I actually enjoyed specifically walking in that game. I most of time skipped using the run-option, but instead just walked. I felt that slow pace really worked well for the Adams Venture, since it felt bit like reading a book, as story unfolds slowly.

Therefore my point being, that think it more like a visual novel or something, as in, you are experiencing a book, and I think that kind of game you could make commercial already, and it wouldnt necessarily need that much work either, as long as there is good story and you are able to design the levels interesting.

For I really liked how this looked. And actually, one thing to notice is that I didnt realise the music was missing, until I checked the video I recorded. Point being, that just the sounds and looks had enough feel to suck me inside the game enough, that I didnt even notice music missing. So there definetily is potential there.

And it seems to me that basically you only need to fix little things to make this already a good niche (commercial)  game. Similar to Adams Venture, as in someone appreciating smaller and slower paced game.

Oh yeah, also that Queue of humans was annoying. I mean, I assume you had to jump in middle of those gaps, but there should have been more gaps there, since it was very annoying waiting for the gap to appear.

If I had to jump only once to a gap, then it had been okay to wait a bit longer, bit like being a puzzle to figure out, but now that I had to jump, was it three times? After the first time it was annoying having to wait for the gap, when I had already figured out how to do it.

And about the christian message, it was quite okay. It was implemented to the game mechanics, and basically somewhat nicely.

On Best Overall I would have given you 3, which might have lifted your placing, with both increasing the average score, as well as givng you less point adjustment (which is always downwards)

Here is the GameJam in question, since another one suggested me to add it: /jam/cgdc-speedgame-classic-2026/results

See specifically the 4th spot "Ambervale" and 10th Spot "Lumea".

In both cases those ahead of them have 12 votes, and get no score adjustment, while those two games have only 11 votes, and get score adjusted.

If they hadnt got the score adjustment, Ambervale would be 3rd (almost is, even with adjustment) and Lumea would rise from 10th to 6th.

This suggestion is based upon what happened in one GameJam that just recently ended.

Itch.io Scoring system is based upon idea that if some entry gets too few votes, then its score is adjusted automatically down.

Although could argue why automatically down, this does, however, make sense.

But, there is one flaw that should be corrected in my opinion. For while it makes sense to adjust points down for lower voted entries, when looking them against the MOST voted ones, it doesnt necessarily make sense to use the adjusted scoring, when looking at NEXT places.

For in this Specific GmaeJam, situation was that MOST voted game got 20 votes.

Then roughly half, or even over half of the games received 11 or 12 votes.

What happened was that Games that got 12 votes, received their points without adjustment, and then games that got 11 votes, got their points adjusted down.

This also resulted that some of those 11 voted games got much lower placement, than they should.

For example, Number 3 and 4 switched places thanks to that. And a game that became number 10, would have become number 6 without point adjustment.

My point here is, that if maximum amount of votes, that any game had received, had been 12, then those games with 11 votes wouldn't have got downadjusted score.

Therefore, when comparing 11 votes games placements, against 12 vote games placements, the adjusted score shouldnt be taken into consideration.

As in this case since 3rd and 4th place were going to 11 and 12 voted games, then when deciding which one of these two become the third game, 11 votes game shouldnt have got downadjusted score, since if 12 votes had been the maximum votes, then there hadnt been any point adjusting, and therefore when deciding 3rd and 4th place between these two, there shouldnt be any point adjusting done either.

might be that it is simply not accessible. Would have liked to know especially the breakdown of funness, since I am wondering how much did it affect that people didnt seem to understand the defensive towers. That if there is clear breakdown of 2-3 and then 5s, then that would probably mean the not inderstanding these tiwers was critical.

i am wondering if there is a possibility to see the given ratings for a single game. As in, I would be interested in seeing how people rated my game in sense of did they all rate simply 3 on some category, getting the average of 3,  or how much variability there was, like did some rate 1, some 5. That would be interesting knowledge.

oh, and one more thing.

Does the player turn change after 1 card is played (unless some effect makes more cards played)?

and do players play against the board, or against each other?

as in, it tells other player to move the henchmen and foxes, making it seem other player is playing agaibst you, but if turns change, then it sounds strange.

also, it tells game is won by placing all 16 seeds, if players are not playing together, then how do you know who won?

having read instructions and cards again, checking couple of clarifications.

Draw three more cards and add to movement. Do these work as separate movements, as in, I pick 1-2-3, i can move 1 down 2 left 3 down? Or does it mean i have to use them as total of 6 movement to single direction?

Did I understand right that normally movement is to single direction? As in, 3 mp means i need to move, for example right-right-right, cant be right-down-right?

and for three turns draw 2 cards, i guess that means i will play both thise cards, as in, get two separate movements, and also play both cards effects?

thanks for clarifying. Unfortunately I didnt read the rules until we were about to start to play, and hence niw got this reply too late. I wont be able to test this before end of rating time, but I try to playtest and give you feedback at some point anyway.

Although it happened to be a bad thing now, it was actually one of the good things that instructions were so short, since I figured I can just print and start playing withiut reading instructions in advance. Had I read in advance, I would have probably realised something was missing and could have asked earlier.

I did figure out that players probably start from the home-corner, and figured either circle number or rectangle number has to do with movement, but I was thrown off by move 1, card, as it showed only 1 rectangle and 2 curcle, and then said to give 1 extra move point, which seemed like a good thing, yet, all the other cards seemed to have hugher numbers. Didnt realise until now that idea is that piece moves certain amount of spaces, to certain direction, and then with 1 extra mp, you can move to some other direction with that extra move, making it much more powerful then.

well, actually there was only very little balancing done unfortunately. Started playtesting only on last two days, and was more of focused making sure it is completeable rather than actually trying to properly balance it.

basically i just made it so that the last level is at least a bit challenging and completeable, and then i made other levels easier, figuring out that there is anyway bit of challenge in them in figuring out how things work. Meant to balance them more carefully, but I think it about worked anyway.

am I not seeing, or is this missing something?

It talks of moving foces and henchmen, but I dont see any of those in pdfs.

similarly, we started playing, i picked 1 card, which was ”move 1”. I can have one extra mp (I assume, Movement Point), but how many movement points do I have, and where am I? Or what am I moving?

thanks for reply. Meant to go today to test the board games, but got postponed to tomorrow. I will consider whether i print this out or not. Main point hete being that being pretty much game of chance, it doesnt interest me much, and bigger problem being that im not using my own orinter, and paper is low, making me hesist printing this out. I am however thinking of maybe printing 4 pages on one paper to save paper and make less printing.

The discussion point I ubderstood and thiught that was a good idea basically. Changes from thoical board game to discussion cards type game, in which case random chance might be valid option, as point is not so much in having a game, than having a fun way to discuss. However, I wonder if current rules are too complex for that purpose, but I anyway liked the idea of having bit different approach to discussion cards, and I think this might work even quite well, since with discussion cards you just pick a card abd start discussing, but in this one you sort of first fall to that temptation, before you stsrt talking about it, making it much more real, and everyone getting to thecright mood, plus having this abstract layer of through game which to think of that temptation through.

thanks for playing. Realised while playtesting tgat you probably can beat the game just by repairing, but decided to leave it that way, since was worried someone might not figure out how defensive pillars work, as I didnt have time to implement any system to hint about how to use them (mainly the point that it had two different hotspots).

It does become mechanical then, and you do miss the main game loop basically then (which is about balancing between towers and building the beacon), but at least you can complete it.

can you either tell the endscene, or even record a youtube video about it? There is difference between not existing at all, and bug preventing it from being seen.

Point here being that it could affect my rating of ”best christian teaching”-part into, perhaps one more star, based upon that sounded like you werent yourself very satisfied for it, and hence it probably wont lift it much more than 1 higher.

that to give bit jarsher example. Assume you had your game done to the point you did, but you accidentally did something that when starting the game it crashes and shows ”syntax error in line 10”.

Should I then rate your game full of 1 stars? No, since that was just one bug in your gane, although it happened to be, both, a critical bug, and at wrong spot, but it is still just a one bug.

therefore similarly, yes, I dodnt get to see the end, but it is just a obe bug, although critical, and at a critical spot, but that end does exist, I just now need an alternative way to see it.

As a first thing a question. Was this game endless, or was it supposed to end somewhere? For I think it mentioned at beginning to save at least 8 people, and I did, actually I had 5 people following me, since I couldnt find the church, and found more people along the way, and when I got there, 4 of them disappeared, making rescued amount be 8/6 or something else similarly confusin like that, and I couldnt get that last one to stay at church, even I tried to go back.

Hence I was wondering if there was a bug which prevented me from seeing the ending, and which could have changed my view on the "Best Christian Teaching"-category, as now you had a very nicely implemented game based upon the verse, but not much of actual teaching. I liked the parable of showing light to people to save them and taking them to church to save them, and fighting against the demons and basically praying to charge your light etc. Great parallelism there, which also taught a christian stuff a bit, but was expecting there to be some end which would have given the final "teaching" that this was still missing for this jams purpose.

I mean, for a regular game this had been a 5 start christianity already in all the parallelism, and church being there etc. but for a christian game jam, I would expect a bit more still.

But so the game otherwise. I liked it very much. It was very very buggy, but not in a critical way, stayed playable and occasionally confused a bit, but it worked well enough and was fun enough to play, despite all the bugs.

Basically only twice I had potentially a bad bug, as in, had they happened at wrong timing, could have ruined the experience.

One was a house that didnt disappear. As in, normally when you went behing the house, the house became transparent, there were couple of houses in which this  didnt happen, and one time I had several enemies on me, I went down towards the house, and suddenly couldnt see myself, nor the enemies, that could have resulted in game over with bad luck.

Similarly, there were couple houses that didnt seem to really be there at all. You could get through their walls just like that, and they never changed transparent. At first I thought that was how they were supposed to be, as one enemy happened to come from side opening out, and then I followed it there and went through the whole house. Only at later point I realised it was not supposed to be so, and also, that there actually was no house at all there, and that again, had enemies attacked inside that blind space, could have killed me.

Couple of times trees also didnt go transparent properly,

Rest of the bugs werent that critical, well, except for the possibly not triggering game end one, if game was supposed to end after 8 people were rescued. I think it said so when I played the first time, but when I played the second time, it didnt show the tutorial anymore.

It took me quite long time to find the first people to rescue, didnt find until I realised to go behind a house for house to turn transparent, and human becoming visible, as quite many were that way.

As others said too, map, or any other indicator had been nice. There could have been a picture of the town, which had showed how many people in which areas there are supposed to be.

And on top of that, signs pointing back to church, since most annoying part of the game, was looking for church.

I would also more clearly make the edges of the game. For one thing that was confusing was that forest seemed to continue for ever, making me wonder if I should continue there or not, even worse, 1 or 2 people actually were in those forest, adding to the confusion even more.

I was also wondering if I continue long enough up or down, will I eventually go around the map or not.

Lots of confusion about the edges of the map, if there were any, seemed like at least to the right there was more clear edge finally, although behind trees.

Upgrades made game so much more fun, and especially the movement upgrade was something I started appreciating quite soon, since it was really annoying looking for church at slow speed.

Good thing was that houses were unique, so you could have figured out where you were all the time, but I didnt. Need to have more landmarks more clearly there.

I liked how enemies started fleeing when they got low health, that made them seem much more alive. And also there were areas where more enemies would attack etc. which kept the game varied, despite there being just one type of enemy.

Mood worked well, it was scary but not scary. Similar to Luigis Mansion, or that Mario Party or Nintendoland, or where ever it was level where one or more players are chacing ghosts with flashlights, this reminded them in a positive way.

When considering how buggy this was, it really shows how strong this game was in that despite such bad bugs still existing, it was very much a joy playing it.

That basically my main complain is that end was missing. And basically if there was an end after rescuing 8 people, then perhaps the upgrades would have needed to be rethought to having only 3 upgrade levels for example, to keep the upgrades more varied, for I started by maxing the extra XP as a first thing, then damage and speed, and didnt get elsewhere yet at all.

Edit: almost forgot to mention properly. what was it with that Rescued people amount keeping changing. like 0/5, 1/9, 2/8. 4/14? That second number seemed to keep changing randomly, while the first number was constantly based upon how many people had actually been rescued.

First of all, this was pretty great entry for something done in just a one week.

But, on the other hand, I think the rushing might be showing. As in, this is a very complete game, especially for something done in a week. It has several towers, several enemies, it has a story shown, and end, even fully fleshed tutorial. But at same time it does feel bit soulless in sense that it feels like everything was done to the professional minimum standard. Felt like you had came to conclusion that minimum amount needed to make towers feel like having variety, is to have three different ones, and then you did so. Similarly felt like you thought, minimum amount to make enemies feel varied, is to have 3 different, plus big bosses, and so you did again.

It feels same time very professional, and I also like to say that your hunch is right, it indeed feels like exactly the minimum amount to make the game feel varied, instead of not varied. But at same time it becoems slightly soulless in that it feels things are too calculated.

But when putting the calculated feeling, I had fun playing this, and if I wouldnt be such overly tower defence veteran, I would have probably enjoyed this quite much. Due to having lot of experience on Tower Defence games, it was bit easy for me, but then again, I wouldnt have liked a hard one on a game jam necessarily either.

And, as I have played so many tower defence games, it is rare to see anything new anymore, and that was one of the great positivesw to me, that there sort of was something new. The Grapes that had to be collected. Although you could say that Plants vs Zombies for example has the same system already, it is not exactly the same system, since you had to plant the flowers, and then there was this sun or something that kept dropping on regular intervals.

That the bushes were there already, and grapes appeared on random bushes, and you then had to pick them. I would count that as something new, even there is similarity to something pre-existing, and that made me very happy, seeing something new in tower defence genre.

While I did like the simple story, it however didnt deepend much the understanding of bible verses. However, while there might not have been much to learn there, game however implemented the verse into a game very nicely.

I think that all in all, this was pretty impressive game for a game done in such a short time, and cant help but wonder what you could have achieved, had you used another week for it. But very professional seeming this one already.

Oh yeah, one thing that made me a bit of confusion was that since I first choces to look the tutorial, and it had text, then when I started the game, and cutscene had no text at all, that felt bit odd at first. My first thought was that some bug happened actually. But it was actually quite nice to make the cutscene not need any text, but it was for any language.

I checked through the PDF, and rules, but I might be missing something there. For when checking through the rules, it looked to me like it was purely a game of chance.

Also, it tells to mark to your stat sheet, like move stat from 8 to 7, but what is the point? Did I simply miss the part where it told why losing stats is a bad thing? For seemed to me like stat moves down, but it actually doesnt do anything, nor is it needed anywhere.

Similarly seemed like I pick a card and those cards do some certain things, but I dont get to make any meaningful choices regarding them.

I assume I missed something. let me know what I missed, since I am considering whether to print this out and try it, probably tomorrow as I am visiting one board gaming friend, so I am hoping to get a three player game going on, but if this really is just a pure luck based game, then I think I will skip it.

Replying here too so that those who dont see the other reply would get this information too.

Yes, you can complete the game without towers, I realised while playtesting that it is probably doable, and considered preventing it, but came to conclusion that since those defensive towers are a bit hard to figure out, due to no good hints existing yet, it would be better to let player be able to get through the game, although the alternative way is the boring way, and missing half the fun of the game, since main fun was supposed to be in balancing the power between different colored defensive towers and balancing between whether to use them to passively damage enemies, or use shooting.

Forgot to still comment about the Cathedral disappearing. I was thinking of rumbling etc. at beginning, but those would have needed some more work to get done. I went with transparency disappearance, since I was already using that all around there, therefore it was quick to implement and a cheap effect from making point of view. 

It also worked thematically, since idea is that, while you might not really notice it, due to the coloring of the cathedrals, they are actually all in full color and full light. I think I told AI to do it that way, so the player wouldnt necessarily notice that they are in full color and light. For idea is that these cathedrals are not from this world, but they are heavenly things. Therefore they are not affected by the loss of color or light, since they themselves are it. 

Also, one of the things is that places of all these cathedrals are known to people of the world, and therefore they could see there are colors and light there, but they have chocen to ignore it. Similarly as we have bible which tells how to live and have a good life, but most people ignore it. They know where to find it, from the bible, but they dont read it. Therefore, similarly even these cathedrals are, and have always been in full color and light, people are ignoring them, and therefore not seeing their colors.

And therefore this transparency fading was suitable way to tell the damage, as enemy cant hurt them, but they can hurt you, the player, to not see them anymore.

Thanks a lot from a long reply.

First, regarding the final cutscene. Run the game again, and Continue the game, and you will now see the cutscene.

I noticed just today myself that there is a bug there, that if after playing the game through, trying to continue journey (meaning, trying to check the final scene again), it will stay on black. I instantly realised where the problem is. I didnt reset my storycrawler after the final cutscene, and therefore, instead of continuing from the save point, it tries to continue after the cutscene, and as there is nothing more there, it just stays black, as it just look that there are no more lines to crawl through, and as nothing was initialized anywhere, it remains a black screen.

But, QUIT the game, and restart the program, and StoryCrawler is not initialized, and therefore correctly continues crawling from the savepoint.

This bug is problem only with the cutscene, elsewhere in the game this bug doesnt happen.

End Cutscene is roughly 4 minutes long. Although, roughly 3 minutes of it are credits, but those credits can be slightly interesting in sense that you get to see those places where you played in full color and full light now, figured that would be somewhat satisfying for the player to get to see the world the player restored.

And yes, regarding the defensive towers, there were two problems with them. First one was AI not doing what I told it to, which was that I told it to make similar looking gem places as that main building had, but even I tried to do it twice, it kept doing it the way it did, hence making it difficult for player to figure out that there are two different hotspots on those deefnsive pillars. That could have eventually been fixed, but as I was using free version of ChatGPT and Grok, I was limited in image generations I could do in a day, which prevented me from trying too much. However, when time extension came, I could have used Grok to fix that actually, but probably forgot about it, concentrating on more essential things, like making the game actually playable and completeable.

Second was that I intended to have some sort of indication about it, light one possibility I was thinking was that there could have been this blinking effect on those hotspots when you build them, this way highlighting that these spots have some meaning, but I didnt have time to implement it. Therefore those defensive towers remained hard to notice and figure out. Although, since this Jams rules told to include instructions for the game, I trusted it would be enough to mention about it on the page, but I guess many dont actually read those game pages before playing, or dont remember about it anymore after starting to play, since there is lot of stuff there anyway to read through, although I do have tried to highlight that defensive tower part in three different ways (in here as reply under the game page, which is alreadhy buried a bit. Then as a first thing in the main page. And finally, as a first thing in instructions part).

I unfortunately didnt really do any playtesting until the last two days, and I was actually wondering myself that the game might be completeable by just repairing the castle. I first wondered should I change it or not, but then I figured, that in case someone doesnt figure out the castles, maybe it is better to leave it as alternative way to complete the game.

I might make better version of this at later point, where I think the repair only becomes an option on second last level or something like that, since I think the first two enemy levels would be more fun if you cant repair the castle, and actually have to use those towers to defend, also forcing player to learn to use them. However, they need to be clearer first then.

Anyway, point was that you were supposed to keep using thsoe defensive towers, and it was all about balancing with them. Idea was that red tower would only hurt red enemies, green one green enemies, and blue one blue enemies. Therefore it was a matter of on which one do you put most power to, since you cant keep much power on all of them. For example, you can have only one of them at that max power of 10, since they decay so fast that you cant keep two of them at 10, it is just not doable, even if concentrating solely on those two, on top of that, you need to keep building the light tower at same time, so you cant realy concentrate all your power on just two defensive pillars either.

I am not sure how the shooting actually works, since there is a bug, and I am not sure what is causing it.

But originally idea was that if you have 1 power, it will hit 1 enemy with 1 damage. If you have 2 power, then it hits 2 enemies, with 2 damage each, 3 power, with 3 damage each, all the way to 10 power hits 10 closest enemies with 10 damage each.

However, enemies come from both sides, therefore there is the question of should you have some power on both sides, as towers also make passive damage once to each enemy as they pass them, or should you perhaps just concentrate on one side of screen, since by using that shooting power, you can damage enemies coming from the other side too, although, then also comes the question of which colored tower should you place closest to the building, since farther away from the center the tower is, harder it is to hit those enemies on other side by shooting, since tower is shooting closest enemies, and especialy if it is the edge most tower, it means that enemies on the same side are always closer than enemies on the other side, meaning you need to be able to shoot all the enemies from your side out, before it reaches to the other side.

So, by other words, you lost a lot of strategy, basically the whole main thing and fun of the game, by having missed the defensive towers, since the fun comes by balancing between defending by which towers, and building the actual light tower.

Anyway, thanks a lot from detailed feedback. And remember, you can now simply run the software again, and click continue journey, and will work.

However, if you accidentally click to end the final cutscene, then you need to once again QUIT the program, and start it again.