itch.io

Okay, that's totally fair. I Retract my sandle from throwing position.

Hey, your art is fine for a short gamejam game, especially as you are just starting out how to make games. That's how we learn! Pretty decent all across the board, you have all the makings of a game here, and it's actually playable, which is still a great achievement. You can actually say you have made a game!

I'm giving you decent marks, and I hope you continue to make stuff, because it's only up and better from here.

I couldn't quite get this one to work well. Also, you made this on godot, so it would have been much easier for you to port this to browser, I promise!

My main critiques: It is very laggy. That could partially be my vm, but I think its just that every enemy is getting movement logic all at the same time.

Lagginess destroyed my ability to play, as I would be able to get one punch in but then take too much damage. The only way I would be able to get off the floor is to spam and hope, which is obviously not what you want. He really needs an effect or animation to show when he is punching, and when he is vulnerable to damage... and honestly, having the enemies damage on contact might not be a good idea when the whole point is to use the enemies to transverse upwards, heh.

It's a little difficult, but I was trying to squeeze in another work project per day. That didn't work out too well.

My issues: sometimes there would be a lot of lag on the day timer, which i knew was only the timer because i could interact with other things, and then it would start again and sometimes be unresponsive to me trying to pause or slow it down.

Initially, there's no need for a night timer: I think that the fastest timing speed should just increase the hour one per second instead of trying to update the minutes very fast.

Really needs music, even something not made by you but royalty free would do!

Overall decent marks, but you definitely could have made this a browser game. I promise exporting to html5 is just as easy as making the windows executable shipping.

Theme adhered to, and I can tell you have a lot of mechanics going on in the background. Good job! I especially like that the Squirrels? Horses? have a collision animation. Why are the singular carrots barcoded? who knows.

Anyways, The two biggest things that could improve this game immediately is making the resolution not ultrawide at first, very disorientating on a browser for anyone without ultrawides. Second: Scene transitions- it fixes the problem of "Did the game just freeze or is it loading something." I you want to be extra fancy, you can just have the loading scenes be short vids instead of actually moving the character/camera in game: like a brief animation of screen turning off and camera rotating away from computer. Driving to work. Even just a black screen with a little moving car in the corner.

Since you put your game within a game up on steam, I'll be very honest here, and this is not something I am rating this game for: in order to sell games, you need to be better at art, or hire the help of someone who is good at art. You have the basics down, but you won't be selling many games if your horses look like squirrels. Your programming is good enough, just gotta level up those other skills if you are going solo.

A good addition! but too easy to play. Powerups are too common, making beating the game a breeze- Some powerups are a bit confusing, EMP's range is too large. I would make the energy pickups totally seperate from enemy drops, so that the player has to solve each level a little more. I had the most trouble with collision, and it seems the enemies get stuck too. Enlarging the map's corridors will help greatly as well.

Oooo, never seen a puzzle attack game like this before. Oozes with style, the only thing missing is a banger soundtrack and sound effects. I was almost too dumb to play it, but i caught on and won. Good heccin stuff.

Very good! Highly playable. Pretty much only the skills need icons (some icon actually disappeared after i selected them) and the ducks are too zoomed out to see any of their detail. I'm pretty sure that after i restarted season entirely, the ducks retained their spawn rate upgrades.

I really like the concept of the game, but the timing of the train coming to station was messed up and inconsistent. And, the bar on the anvil was going crazy fast up and down, so much that I had to spam spacebar to possibly get hits. Are they framerate dependent? The bats instantly moving into your hitbox really made it hard to not instantly lose your health, and I couldn't regain health in time due to the train timer. 

A very good prototype, just rough to play due to above things. Good job!

Good job! I had fun playing it, the "no touching" rule confused me a bit, until I read what you said about cells =/= pieces in a different reply. I wonder if there's something else you can use instead of money to create a cost, something that fits aesthetically with the puzzle game style.

I don't have a lot of content to talk about here, but I'll give you what I can:

When i move left or right, the sphere moves a little bit the wrong way before starting the right direction- it also feels like the ball is moving slower than it should. I'm also not sure if there IS a y-direction impulse in a gamemaker sphere, so that might be why you can't go "up" in your test inputs.

Yooo! this is rad. I love this, once I "got" it. This is very expandable, and I hope it continues to something you can actually publish.

My main problems: the buttons hide players and enemies, and it was hard to tell who was targetting who. I also softlocked myself for a bit until i realized that was a boss in the middle of the axe wielders.

The dog in the corner is mega cute, but doesn't match the style of the game- that could still work due to us playing as a fourth dimensional player-dog, but if the graphics are henerally improved that can also make it less "jarring" for a 3d modeled dog to be in the corner.

Once I understood how to sacrifice the cards (drag to right-most red card slot), I was cruising. Until I ran out of cards and lost. I enjoyed this a lot, and your custom track is dang good for a first track! Your art style is fun as well. I think my biggest critique is that the text is too small, even on fullscreen, to read well. Some basic instruction of what is where (where's mana? got it after a bit) will also really help. Very good marks from me!

Good Prototype! I think if you decreased the max speed of the truck, decreased the acceleration, but increased the time it took to slow down, it would balance pretty well. Trash should spawn in earlier, as sometimes it would spawn right in front of me and be unavoidable. If you do the above speed/accel tweaks, slowing down the steering would also help the truck feel more like a truck.

I really like this, a very good addition! This might be a skill issue, but I can't seem to find paths to expand my base more than two buildings. Oop, nevermind, I uh... got an ending. I wonder if you made more endings? Hrm. :3

My main issue is that most choices seem to be limited to "Do/Do Not" choices, where selecting the Do Not choice always ends that path and resets the agent. Thus, I only net gain by picking the top option almost every time. Yes, sometimes I get corruption, but it's better than... nothing happening at all? There are a few exceptions, though, and those are the best.

Mmmm, golden apple. AND PATS THE FERRET

Almost full marks- which is what I would say if you didn't lie in your GDD about the source of these assets. You said "Original pixel art and handmade tile maps." In your GDD- this is stating that you made the Kenney asset packs you used here. If this is a language error, you forgot to change the GDD during prototyping, or... perhaps you used something else to write parts of your GDD... Feel free to reply to me here. But I will be rating you lowly for that until I get confirmation. To preserve your game entry, you cannot edit it until after rating ends.

Very very nice! Your art style is so fun and charming, extra points for that. Also love the 2.5d thing going on, it adds some fun character and depth to the game. Your music is also good, not annoying to listen to, just a nice simple jam that adds the tension you mentioned in the GDD without missing the humour of the game.

My critiques, which I don't rate on:

The main character and her cats vibrate as you move forward and back- I wonder if this is because the character movement is horizontal but the angle of the floor is not perfectly horizontal?

Sometimes when I threw a cat, the cat sprite attacking the enemy would not appear, making the enemy look like they're just running away and collapsing ahaha.

I could see inside the building when i jumped on the balcony outside the front door.

This one affected play: the angle of the cat throw meant the sometimes I would miss enemies at a certain distance away from me. I would recommend reducing the curve of that parabola, but the distance felt right.

Very, very good! I like the artstyle and the chill music. The sacrifice transiton effect is very good. The level/map is simple but good. Almost full marks! Your only issue is that the GDD is not completed.

Everything I have below is suggestion and I don't rate on these:

I am not getting a cursed vibe- I'm more getting a vibe that predation of the anthro villager is happening, instead of what the text says. I think a few elements of "show, not tell" would help in adding a cursed atmosphere: maybe there's more trees around but the farther ones have cursed non-natural tree parts, like eyes or flesh or dark tendrils or even tentacles instead of branches.

I like how the villagers look tired, ramp that up in subtle ways to really sell the physical debuffs (example: less sanity = bags under eyes, maybe bloodshot, messy har)

Adding the villagers in certain sections of each "working" place, either visible as cards, perhaps even unique character animations working in the environment, would grant a very lived in feel.

Adding more names would be a good thing. I have had many beatrices and celestes.

BUG: when i recaped month 7, it didn't start the sacrifice choice, and had me replay the month. After doing that it worked as normal EXCEPT month 8 remembered who I placed for month 7, except the new villager card i gained from sacrifice.

Simple, short, and sweet. I think the priorities you would have to improve on this the most, the fastest, would be music and log pushing sound effects, giving the player dot a real sprite, and some instructons in game. But for what you do have, and how smoothly it runs, good marks from me :3

Ahaha, short and charming! I love your sense of humour. From a technical standpoint, adding the broken screen parts as platforms was clever, and the first bit of needing to press the play button multiple times set the stage for the humour well.

My main critiques: having the text stay on screen slightly longer can probably help readers that aren't super fast. The sparkle effect on the play button often persists.

As for theme, I think you did very good for how much game you worked with.

You get high marks from me :3

I beat it! Nyaaass~

Cough. Very charming game. I was worried my brain wasn't big enough to play it, ahaha. For a first completed game, this is wonderful! Love the asthetic and style, but the black background on the website caused me to accidentally mouse out of the game and die a few times that way. The fullscreen also isnt centered (firefox), not sure how or why. If your kitty gets too far to the left or right, you can't course correct, but I wouldn't change that because that's part of the difficulty of trying shortcuts.

I think theme adhearance is good! Full marks for you!

Very quiet- turn up that volume ;)

Kinda frustrating, but not necessarily because of difficulty. Buildings don't give what I expect. Farms and Large farms don't give me food, or at least it reads zero. Parks give food for some reason? two parks and a greenhouse are supposed to give me enough food to survive for a population under 30 each turn, but I insta lose- Augh. Ack.

I would like this game a lot if I wasn't so confused.

Lovely game for a first go! The theme adherance is good, though some things you mention in GDD and game description aren't in (cost of sanity?). I hade fun dodging the arrows and swords.

I couldnt find where the time ability applied-

My main critiques are: Too smol! I cannot see the detail of the characters or enemies very well. If you made the entire game twice as big it would help a lot. 

The mouse to pick up hearts was finicky.

Big one: If you get MORE hearts for your diety, it fails you. So, make sure the heart requirement uses an >= operand.

I love the destructable fences. Nice touch

I experienced a magnitude FAT earthquake on day seven! LMAO

Really liked it, only playable/smooth on chromium browsers or brave. It wasn't really possible to get happy customers- they stink up too fast, and I'm not sure, but I think the stink range is broken or double proccing or something, because customers on the other side of the room would get angry from a stinker on the other side.

Certain machines can clip into eachother if you place them in the right order, here I placed the frag games down in the center and then clipped the smaller arcade cabinets into their backs. Kinda like that though, ngl, and the clipping didnt seem to be destructive to gameplay at all.

the dance machines sometimes bug the audio of the other arcades- or maybe that's because i had way too many machines, so that only a few would play their sound once i placed down my dance machines.

Edit: The adhearance to theme was a bit lacking, I didn't really feel like i was "paying" to progress besides money. And since money is the usual cost of progression, it needs something else to really shine in that category.

Altogether though, very good. I'm surprisedm it worked fully on my browser, and it was smooth with only the slightest of lags when day 7 started andi put down the dance machines

Oog, I was tired and somehow I completely missed telling you how much I loved playing this?!?! This was fantastic to play and I actually had to force myself to stop playing it, it was that good. And for a SECOND gamejam entry? Omg you will go very far in gamedev. *senator palpatine meme* I will be watching your career closely ;3 (I'll give ya a follow, but of course, no pressure)

If you want to show off the meeple paste colour, maybe have the pestle fill with the paste as you grind it?

Very fair! Thank you for trying it out despite my kinda wacky controls. I really loved your game, too!

Thank you, you are a hero for posting this as I had no idea I accidentally kept spacebar instead of Shift! That'll be one of the first things I will change once voting is over. I will also add some sort of marker for the campfire, that is a great idea.

You are so right, I originally was going to add a little wing glider set to our ferret friend to explain the flying thing, and extra clouds and pieces of sprites that vary in blurriness to sell the "you are high in the trees and flying down" look, but I totally ran out of time and just had to add the chickens randomly.

Oooo, I have not seen that all eggs disappear bug... I wonder if something is not communicating correctly... hmmm.

Although I have my heart set on the weird transversal system (learning godot shaders through it. My brain hurts), Thank you so much for sticking through the jank and giving mah game a try!

I found out the hit detection was inconsistent on the html build, but not on test build,  so I'm pretty sure it's something I don't understand yet for browser. WELP. Yeah, I spent so much time trying to figure out the blur thing, and then it looked nothing like how I wanted it to LOL. Thank you for playing! (Shift down to go down a level, you always start at level 4, and each level transversal costs an eggy)

This game actually made me tear up a bit, because your thoughtful, beautiful text blurbs. These little text pieces are well written and that makes all the difference in how hard this game hits.

I was the best dang mayor they ever had, all clean, all honest. The old man planting the tomatoes... The kids laying down on the grass for the first time. I'm not crying, you're crying.

Full marks*. Absolutely deserved, even objectively. Music is perfect, sound effects are good, cost of progress hits hard and I imagine that if I let anything go to soot, that those consequences would hit hard too. Gameplay is well made and well designed. The only thing I would alter is adding a little texture difference to tiles, the tiles may be hard to discern for the colourblind. But simple is better in this style.

*Except for GDD, that needs some more meat on it. But otherwise, Full heccin' marks. I really hope you make it to top 10.

HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND.

You get full marks* but i hate you, just a little bit. lmao.

The underside bit of the ivy passage is what feels unfair- I would LOVE a checkpoint after the water filling part just so I can progress faster. Doing the same beginning over and over again is brutal!

*Except the GDD. That thing needs a little love.

My friend, you are overqualified. LMAO.  Full marks, here's some bugs/issues I found:

1. it's possible to pushback enemies offscreen, where they become unkillable.

2. Mastervolume is a bit low- raise it up a few dB

3. Enemies spawn too much when just beginning- or, ground tiles break too quickly. But, once you get some power and upgrades, things balance out well.

4. No clear indication all enemies are dead in a room besides pressing my face against room entries.

Theme adherence is strong as this is definitely a roguelite, and roguelites by definition lever loss of run : cost of progress. However, I think you can do even better. Maybe you can chose some upgrades that have that corrupted stat, but other good stats?

I could play this without lag in brave browser, but it was very laggy in firefox. The aim of the gun was way off the the left, even from level start, but it was consistent and I managed to pick up the extra item. A really interesting demo! Almost full marks from me, as style was consistent, music matched, but the cost of progress wasn't very strongly integrated- I didn't need to repair my gun at all. 

Makes me nostalgic for arcade games, and that means you NAILED the on rails shooter feel.

Oh, also, the fact that you stylized the interactive gdd as a game manual? Mwa, chef's kiss. If I wasn't giving you full marks for GDD already that would bump it up to maximum.

Ouch. Out of all the games so far, this one really hits the hardest. Somehow, I managed to get through without leaving anyone behind... after a few tries. Full marks. Actually kinda hurts to play, and that means yall made the psychological effects through the breathing and the music and the writing perfectly.

The only critique I have is the base master volume is low, bump that up a few dB's and then your volume sliders will take care of anyone else's needs.

This is the first game that has crashed my browser, had to play it on brave, heh. It opens too small and the fullscreen is buggy, So i had to  zoom in onto the itch page in order to even read the text. Legibility is important, make that text bigger! Also, dafont dot com has some free (check the license) RADICALLLL fonts you can use to really spice the game up.

As for gameplay, well, there isnt gameplay- but, it's a good proof of concept. You spent your time on the art and I really like your style. I like the music too but its a bit loud, so unfortunately I had to mute it.

Your GDD is... well, it's hard to read, but I can tell you put what you needed for yourself in it, and that's the important part.

I didn't really understand what I was seeing until I realized that random events were happening and I couldn't control any of them. I was trying to click the gas station to get gas really fast, lol. The icon for gas is not clear, I recommend highlighting the icons in another colour so i could see the spout of the dark background.

A very nice game! Good marks from me. My only real concern is that I could not interact with objects while staying still, I had to be moving. Also it took my an embarrassingly long time to figure out i had to climb up the ladder with up. That's a skill issue on my part ahahah

Hmm, I can tell you spent a lot of your time brainstorming. Unfortunately, there isn't much of what you included in the GDD yet, so I can't review too much.

For a first prototype, not bad. I recommend explaining why we start with voidrunners- that is completely unexplained in the game, as you only introduce our main character. Also, there is no maze, just a slime bossfight- which need to be balanced to be a LOT weaker, especially for the first boss. 

I'm not sure if this is intentional, but when I finally beat the boss, it just led me to the loading scene picture. I cannot control anything further.

When/If you make the main character sprite, make sure they are outlined in a colour that floor tiles do not use/ do not use often. With a limited pallete like this, that is difficult, but important to see our character wherever they go.

Spelling errors were common- AbysSlayer, for example. When naming these runners, seperate their names like "Abyss Slasher"

When there is only one target, like the slime, the attack button should select that target automatically. That will make the game a lot quicker and reduce frustration.

Good music choices! Very Abyss-y.