itch.io

I've updated the web version with some small tweaks, a new letter in the tutorial and a tweaked puzzle based on the feedback received by initial players. The original compo version can be still downloaded.

Start == Enter Key

Took me a while to realize that right-click controlled the right gun, with all the sparks I just thought it alternated at first.

Wow, music is a banger! What a tight game for a jam! It really came together beautifully. Love it!

I TRULY ENJOYED YOUR GAME. I THINK YOU EMBRACED THE THEME VERY WELL AND I ALWAYS LOVE LEARNING SOMETHING NEW. SO DID MY CHAT. THANK YOU!

CHECK THE VIDEO DESCRIPTION FOR CHAPTERS THAT JUMP DIRECTLY TO THIS GAME. ITCH.IO IS NOT PROCESSING THE TIME URL PARAMETER FOR THE VOD LINKS ON YOUTUBE

Thanks again TigerJ for playing! Direct video link to time code here.

Ah, thanks for the visual! I would take a guess that it has something to do with the language encoding of the keyboard. I only tested for English US, oops! 🤦‍♂️ I wonder if I can repro if I change my OS settings to French or if I'd need a HW keyboard as well, not sure if I have our old one still.

(I'm doing some funky things with Godot to translate the raw keycode to the ASCII character, I probably need to do a whole mapping of every key but that was going to take a long time for a jam vs. just calling a couple of hacky functions... 😅)

Cool, I'm happy with 74! Set a good bar for the next player.

I'll leave game comments on the Ludum Dare page.

I liked being able to place as I go to see where I needed to make more space. It'd be nice to have unlimited undo though, at least for an easy mode. There's already a lot of possible combinations, so it was already tricky to find the right combination to make the right shapes. Sometimes I'd just find I screwed up like 5 pieces ago. I'm not sure the purpose of the ingredients stacking and why dragging them as a stack was important though?

Thanks for playing and the great feedback!

Yeah, everything came together pretty late in the dev cycle. We did add some flashing of the characters when they're "hit", but it is pretty subtle. Definitely a bit more we could do here to make things a bit more obvious. 

Right now, it's a mix of both turn-based and real-time mechanics, I think we like things about both systems. We had very little time to playtest the game as a whole in the end, so just happy we got something together! But definitely something that I'd want to explore a bit more. The pressure of having to act, I think is important, but the aspect of managing what you're matching to fuel your abilities but not your opponents may just be enough strategy anyway!

We had discussed some alternatives as well, so if we look into moving forward with this in the future, it'd definitely something I'd explore a bit more.

Thanks! We had a lot of fun putting this together and trying this mix of ideas!

Love the concept, really interesting idea. Simple, yet effective, the best kind! I did find it a bit frustrating to start up a path that would dead-end or just be out of reach of another path. I feel like being able to jump the full height of a block would be nice, as I found myself next to a block many times that I couldn't jump on to.

I'd also recommend tweaking the shadows/lighting. The light seems to be coming across the playfield, so it's kind of impossible without looking up all the time to know that a block is about to land on you. The shadows really need to be like directly projected onto where the block is going to land, so as the block approaches you from 10seconds above or something, you see the shadow below your feet indicating where you are is no longer safe to stand.

As fun as the block all falling down straight from above are, I feel like if they fell ahead of me forming paths out in front of me (as the lava rose forcing me along them) would make it easier as the player to look for opportunities and options to progress by being able to keep my viewport focused in one area as I try and move. There was just a lot going on to make it hard to understand where to look and where I should be going with all the constant movement in the so much space around me. Though I also see this allure of the continually higher structure, but again being able to know I had to move was key, and either some smarter generation or slightly more jump power to be able to better traverse across to more paths would be nice. Like I'd rather have the challenge of trying to just jump up the "mountain" and getting higher and learning how I can stretch my jumps vs. getting trapped on a dead spire and having to backtrack.

Like I never saw how I'd make it to keep up with new blocks. I wonder if waiting for the player to be near the highest placed block before a set of new blocks fall would be interesting too?

What a fun idea! I love the nostalgia vibes this game gives off with its theming, juice, and vibes! I ran into an issue on the web version where after I started rotating pieces they'd just get stuck rotating continually on their own. I also didn't know how to rotate at first, so it'd be good to list the controls on your itch page as well! It could also be good to provide a skip button for the intro, or just remember if you've played it for the player once already or something.

It definitely took a little bit to figure out how to best navigate bridging across, I feel just slamming a bunch of blocks to the side except for making a path across over time of one color seemed like it could keep working for a while. It'd be neat to see other mechanics like the water and ways to exploit all the squishiness you have going on here to let the player have a bit more manipulation somehow. I just felt like I was missing a tiny bit of something...

There was so much juice though! It was so cool to just see everything squish and move around together, such a great use of physical simulation!

Thanks for playing! Yes, it's a known issue. I ended up trying a different approach for the board using Godot's TileMapLayers, but it's caused some issues... 😅 I think it was a bug introduced late too, as we added the special supplies spawning in from matches late in the process after I had already written the code that does "gravity". I need to try giving that a look over again.

Oh my gosh, when I got the lawn mower! That was fantastic, so satisfying... 😊

It took me a bit to notice the progress bar at the bottom, but that was super handy, it'd just be nice to have a full checklist of the tasks in the corner or somewhere in order to know a bit more what to do.

Agree with the other comment that knowing how the old man worked and when he'd chase you was a bit confusing, he also seemed superfast at times, so I'd just instantly lose, I also didn't expect him to move beyond the fence, though I did appreciate the little shortcuts to weave back into the yard. It'd also be nice if it wasn't just instant lose too, maybe he just gives you more of a task to do or resets some progress?

At least while using the lawn mower I was expecting to have more driving controls where just Left/Right steers than compass directions, I'm wondering if that's why the other movement felt off too? Something was just a bit odd, but it was a bit hard to put a finger on.

It's really hard to both jam and learn a new engine, so impressive that you built all this together, good job!

Ah, this is super cute! Really giving me Untitled Goose Game vibes. I was totally expecting a loud honk sound effect when the seagull popped up on the title screen. I really needed the squawk button too, I think making the squawk mode an active trigger would have made it a bit more immersive.

I was little confused if there was an end, as things just seemed to continue. Some sort of round or score display could have been useful. The slow dismantling of the ice cream truck was amusing, though when someone took the nest I thought it was supposed to be over?

The transition of walking and flying was great, though I mean I usually flew ever where, having a bit more need for walking somewhere for something could be handy, though I'd want to move a tiny bit quicker on the ground. Maybe you could be squirreling things between your nest and another safer location?

It'd be great to see a post-jam version and what v2 would look like, great job!

Thanks so much for playing and your feedback! We had a great time putting it together. I've definitely been learning to try and stick to simpler concepts to increase chances of at least getting a game submitted, that's half the battle!

The dialogue text is super tiny! I think I got stuck on the wires, the check button didn't seem to do anything. It was a bit odd having keyboard movement but then needing to click on things as the interaction trigger.

As others have mentioned, seems like a lot of on rails narrative and running around vs. having any agency in the investigation. I was expecting to just go to the various parts of the ship to find clues and then maybe interrogate the crew to look for misaligned information.

There's a lot to unpack here. I love the planet, quite a stunning display. I really wanted to get into figuring out how things work, but there was a bit too much.

I think pairing things down a bit and focusing on some core experiences and streamlining those would have helped. There's just a lot of complexity and facets here which make it hard to understand what's going on, and I would perpetually get tripped up with dialogs sticking around or not or clicking on the planet when trying to navigate to the next step, especially as I saw the targets in the tutorial on the planet appearing over whatever window I had opened. Or trying to deselect what I had selected. Having hotkeys is great, but they should be indicated in the UI as well, especially for the buildings.

The whole UX really needs an audit for the level of depth the game provides at the moment, it really reads like I see so many UIs these days with just a lot of extra complexity, dense amounts of information, and layers of information. It was just hard to understand what a city was taking in and what it needed as every resource had a listing even if it wasn't relevant. Outside that in just the world view a clear toggle switch for resource view would have been good, as well as making selection its own toggle mode aside all the buildings to make it easier to get back to a 'safe' way to select cities and other buildings.

Impressed with the amount of depth here for a game jam! The controls were a big sluggish to start, and it was initially clear about the upgrades and disguise mechanics, could have been good to call out more in your instructions. 

I think it would have been maybe more interesting if disguising your ship was free and just an action to perform, maybe with a cooldown. Then it'd feel more like being a sneaky pirate and lean into the theme more of deception and the trust between the different factions. It being buried in the menu when I'd rather upgrade my boat's controls meant I basically ignored it.  It was also tricky that cannon balls had unlimited range, so I'd fire one off accidentally or whatever and it'd hit another ship way off screen who'd come to attack me...

I think having a couple of more objectives like islands with treasure to dig up would be interesting to, give a few more things to try and "sneak behind enemy lines" to try and secure funds to upgrade your ship or defenses, etc... In the future too, it'd be nice to see the other boats patrolling the seas a bit more than waiting around for you to engage with them.

Hi Rue, not sure what happened to the other account, had you joined a team or were you still looking? You have a great portfolio! I've done a number of jams in the past, the most recent couple with Godot (you can check them out in my profile here).

Are you on Discord? I hopped on the Game Dev Shift block jam thread over here (from the other thread on the board here): https://discord.com/channels/596172251028520960/1416250407516246026 - My profile is the same over there.

Howdy, I've done a number of jams over the years (feel free to check out my itch page for some of them). My partner and I have been doing a couple more recently with Godot. We'd be happy to coordinate with you and be mentors.

Are you on Discord? I hopped on the Game Dev Shift block jam thread over here (from the other thread on the board here): https://discord.com/channels/596172251028520960/1416250407516246026 - My profile is the same over there.

The whole package of this game is super chill, it's really well put together! I really enjoyed digging into this world. Was there any hints/impact on which role you chose besides the power-up? It'd definitely be nice to have a few more tooltips in places, especially on the cards for their abilities. I never did quite understand what gaslighting did, and I never saw a reason to draw cards with Ponder, I basically always had something useful to do in hand.

I did see the card drag issue someone else mentioned, I also did get offered the same card for my initial additional card, small things. Should the enemy hand block thing have said reduces incoming deductions? It mentioned increases which confused me at first.

The characters were great. I really love all the polish that went into this to get the core idea together!

Really great bones for something here! I'm sure you two had a blast testing this, but for a jam it'd be great to at least have a single player mode. I managed fine enough with the keyboard to play a round, it was a bit tricky to know what to do at first, but easy enough to pick-up. It'd be great to see a bit more feedback on positive results during play, as well as a bit more progression with types of things going on with the luggage or within the airport.

Maybe players are luggage porters and have to try and bring the proper safe suitcase to an awaiting passenger, add a bit of memory and more logistics to the mix. I also see this going bananas with like a four-player mode. Excited to see v2!

I'd say in some way, having the extra crud around makes it more chaotic, especially if you did 4-players in the future and just had luggage get dump/overflow eventually onto the floor, it'd lead to folks wondering if a bag had been checked already or a strat where a player just takes bad bombs that another play threw in a pile elsewhere and put it back in the to-be-sorted pile... 😅

Interesting take on this type of dual-controller puzzle. I do wish that I could just swap between which character I controlled at will vs. selecting at the very start (before knowing what that even meant). It would have made it a lot easier to navigate the world.

A few more earlier puzzles to aid in teaching some of the mechanics would be useful. Thematically, I'm still trying to understand a bit about how the shadows are getting "formed", but that's a story/narrative element maybe. 😅

It's always cool to see something that can evolve beyond a jam.

Thanks! Yeah, we've been talking about maybe a way to spray paint/color the sheep for post-jam. We've got a few other ideas that we've got to start tracking. 😅

This was not clearer... I had no idea what was going on and what I was supposed to be doing, chips were going in, I didn't know what actions to take. Then we started playing out the hand half-way in which at least aligned a bit more with what I thought was going to happen, but then it was hard to understand how lying helped at that point? The angle of the able in not really being able to see the whole picture makes it pretty hard to see what the opponents are doing. Plus, if we can see all the cards but then be lying, I wasn't sure why that mattered? Especially if the "lanes" were supposed to line-up, there was just a lot of contradiction in the instruction and too much that relied on knowing other pieces within the rules to make it easy to parse.

I think trying to do less real-time, at least for the single-player mode would have helped, as there's just too many rules and things to understand in order to play. I feel like there's 3 or 5 concepts mashed together here, which makes it really hard to understand how any one of them works. The setup and atmosphere were great, but it was really hard to get into and understand what you were going for.

A rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock sort of chart could be maybe easier to follow for the suits, but again it feels like just another layer. Like I didn't get why cards had health either. Sticking with just a base normal deck of cards and having highest card of the same followed suit wins, but then just being able to lie ahead of time of what you're playing could have been enough and easier to follow, for instance. Then just deal out a new hand to start another round then having a card health system.

This game looks amazing, quite the environmental detail, and you nailed the 2D/3D mix. The wisps kept appearing for me after I'd seen them in a spot before, so that was a bit confusing. I was also a bit confused on what else I was supposed to be doing near the end.

It'd be great to see a bit more beyond just walk to place, pick/do thing, but this is really impressive to see done for a jam with the amount of detail and character you've built into this world. Definitely some intrigue, but I just needed a bit more detail and insight into the character I'm embodying.

This is the second escort game I've played, but this works much better within the theme and mechanics.  Requires a sharp eye and patience. Lots of nice details in here and the uniqueness of the characters and the randomness gives it a lot of replayability.

I feel like in one run I got the message that I had eliminated all the murderers and then immediately lost, maybe collateral damage? Took a bit to realize I could play Fullscreen from the settings, was expecting the expand button on itch. Playing Fullscreen was a big boon to the immersion. I did just want to shove the King along and other people out of the way though too... 😅

The whole vibe really fits the theme spot on too, as you just have to keep looking and be like, is that the one? It's simple, but it works really well.

I could see this being expanded with a bit of story and maybe some kingdom management, where the villagers come for assistance and your likability as King effects how many people are coming after you, and those would be the ones you may have scorned through not assisting earlier too when you go out for your daily walk around town... 😋

Great game and use of theme! Ended up taking some notes in notepad, so having even just a couple of simple ways to mark characters in the game would be an extra handy addition. I also couldn't get back to the Main Menu at the end for some reason, but that wasn't a big deal.

I'm not too sure where money played a factor, as I also had to sometimes send folks on a mission that would fail to ensure I learned who the traitors were.

Amazing opening cutscene as well! The character art was great too!

Wow, this was amazing! So well put together and smooth. Though also a bit hard at times! 😅 Though our game required perception too, so it's fun to see it in a different way. 

I wish the store started a little smaller and with fewer types of customers so I could learn the patterns a bit before getting more variety and more area to secure! The text is also a bit small in places like the upgrade screen, but otherwise, this is sublime.

I could see this turning into a full game post-jam, add more tasks like restocking shelves to split the attention and other upgrades (like stock boy), more customer types, etc... Very intriguing! And the puns were purrfect!

Amazing game! Art is gorgeous and the concept fantastic for the theme. Really well done!

Super minor things that would have helped:
1. The characters having their names above their heads or something, as you only learn their names talking to then. I know many are a bit obvious, but it's just a simple thing that would have helped to reduce a bit of the back-and-forth of reviewing information.
2. Most of the dialogue/action is gated by clicking to the next bit of dialogue with the arrow buttons except the interludes... it'd be great if they also paused after each message to allow advancing, as I'd get used to being able to just read at my own pace during interrogation and then suddenly everything's advancing without me doing anything. I know it's a cutscene, but losing that control was just the tiniest bit jarring.
3. Some of the dialogue audio (think it was vampire group) is a lot louder than the rest of the audio.
4. Indicator of which puzzle of total I'm on.
5. At end ability to go back and re-play failed puzzle.

I think there was at least one puzzle where someone said "I didn't do it." and if you verify that one, then that solves the puzzle. That'd be fine for maybe the first puzzle, but defeats the purpose of logical deduction a bit. So, it'd be nice to see a bit more subtlety to the clues.

I did find myself not using the total number of lies as much, I guess if there's characters which can corroborate their stories, then that can help you deduce what the truths are without verifying explicitly and zero in on the lies. I'm trying to think how this could be extended further into a larger game, and I'm not too sure. But as a minigame for a jam like this, it was most excellent and a great play! Thanks!

Why are all the police, firemen, and nuns after Grandma? WHAT HAS SHE DONE!? Some extra back story that Grandma was a spy or criminal mastermind or something would be useful...

It did pause a bit on the web loading the effect for the attack, so that confused me a bit at first. I was also hoping to advance the dialog with the keyboard (space), it was weird to have to go to the mouse just for that when the main controls are keyboard. You could also have mouse control for movement and attacking as well to just allow both.

This was definitely quite the escort mission of a game. There didn't seem to be any consequences though, I was expecting to lose if someone reached grandma or for her to have a health bar or something at some point. I did like that there was the range where she would follow you, leaving her to fight off the swarm felt like an interesting choice, but it'd be nice to have a bit more substance and stakes in the fight.

I think she's pausing at the places to do errands? That's the story I told myself at least... 😅

Yeah, I also got the froze, I feel like maybe it happened when the music track ended part way through the first round? I think I also had a weird scenario where I couldn't figure out the logic as two of the four confirmed it was one of the other two as they both said the same thing, but then the remaining two said the opposite that would incriminate the other... it was a bit distracting with them hoping and moving around to keep track of... 😅

Fun concept though, as others have said the reveal was fun. I think I'd like it if I could more easily drag the folks around into three different columns to represent the good, maybe, and bad.

Yeah, really great job embodying the plight of the hamster. I loved the twist where not all shelters are created equal... Great job! Will be interesting to see where you can take this idea post-jam.

The food art was amazing, definitely he highlight. It was a little tricky to click on them in the cafeteria though at times. It'd also be great if they didn't cover your balance and it was clearer before you hit a button that it was too expensive. Some of the text on the buttons was tiny too, so some general text scaling could help. I was sad the interesting battle background just turned green during the battle itself.

It'd be nice to have some health bars or a bit more info/action during the battle itself. I also wasn't sure if my team healed between battles, but it didn't really matter because it snowballed pretty quickly. I didn't even see the Recipe buffs until the end and didn't really need them, were they supposed to cost money too? So, definitely some balance to work out. It could be interesting if you're fighting different food for the battles, and then later those are ones you can buy when new foods to fight come along. I wasn't going to play 100 rounds though... 😅

Put a smile on my face, look forward to seeing a bit of polish in it post-jam!

The first wave of enemies came in hot and nearly took me instantly out, but I loved hearing them crash into the asteroids as I deftly flew through the asteroid field. Really interesting esthetic and lots of potential.

I do feel I was looking for a bit more agency, especially when there was a lot of dialogue to go through to choose Y/N on the mission, I generally just went with whatever option I got to first vs. backing out and trying to compare the options. While I'm usually one for seeing how long I can go without shooting sometimes in games, I did feel like I was missing something, maybe even just a limited boost option. I needed my ship to have a bit more weight to it, even if it was just a flame out the back when I had the accelerator on.

On one hand, especially for the title, the long-haul emptiness of space vibe was interesting, but on the other hand, there was a bit too much of it. It'd be useful I think to have some of the earlier missions be shorter, and also for each mission to have at least something "interesting" about it, whether it's an asteroid field, enemies, or something else. Some rewards/upgrades and making the choice of mission more impactful too will help.

It was a bit hard to see where the theme really came into play into the game itself vs. just world building around the clients. In the future, some sort of reputation/faction system where doing different jobs made you friendly to some and enemies to others over time that could change (and that you could recognize the different ship types of) could be interesting.

In either case, this is a phenomenal jam game you've put together, and it's a great start to something bigger!

New high score! 😅 Level 15 with 6 baaad guesses only.

Thanks! It's a bit subtle now, but if you look carefully you start to sort it out, then it gets a bit easier. We definitely have a few ideas for some extra things to add in making the wolf more distinctive for earlier levels for post-jam.