itch.io

Thanks bro!
I love using stock assets, I'm not an artist by any means but I feel like stock assets just add a certain charm, especially to smaller jam/web games. A lot of early 2000s and 2010s flash games used them because they were easy to get, but sadly in recent time stock assets are much harder to find and use, especially since companies keep adding gross ai images to stock libraries

Thanks K!
Glad you enjoyed the music, Collin put a lot of heart into it.

Yeah I was worried the boat grind might be a bit much, but I'm glad you found your own strat~!

Thanks!

OMG I appreciate all the kind words!

Collin (my bf) did all the music on his guitar, guitar pedals, and in fl studio so I'll let him know you enjoyed it!

Thank you!

Thank you!
Also yeah I know the ui can be a bit annoying, the cutscene/dialouge system was imported from another project of mine and I didn't have enough time to add mouse controls so that's why it is the way it is.

Thank you bro, idk what rock the dude on stream has been living under thispersondoesnotexist has been around forever. Literally when I was first learning to make games one of my teachers showed it to me as an easy free-to-use tool for making people. I just hope that no one else has to deal with something like this on the live stream.

He tends to have that effect on people.

Actually, the faces are from thispersondoesnotexist.com!
Thanks for playing!

Really cool idle game!
I had this on in the background while I watched the edp doc so I really got the full experience, overall I found it fun to breach the different shells while upgrading my drill. Great work!

GREAT JOB GUYS!!!!!

Really fun gameplay mechanic!! 

Switching shells to use different abilities reminds me heavily of kirby, which I love. I also enjoyed the art, music, and sfx. Overall, the experience is grand!

Nice work!
Reminds me a bit of mine sweeper but in a cool casino setting, I also enjoyed the book and the explanation of all the card types. It made it very easy to start playing strategically.

Great music, the gameplay mechanic was easy enough to figure out but I guess I'm just not that strong of an egg cuz I kept dying lol. Good Game!

Really fun!
It reminds me of golf mini-games, but as a turtle!
Overall I enjoyed all the levels and was able to understand the gameplay mechanics super easily, great job!!!

Interesting gameplay mechanic, sfx volume def could be turned down though.

CRAB JUMPSCARE WARNING PLEASE!

Jokes aside, cool little maze game! Reminds me of the type of stuff markiplier plays.

Great job guys!

The game would not open for me, but the screenshots look cool!

Nice artwork, game looks pretty good.

Wish there was a game, but cool colors on the 3D model!

Really cool concept! Enjoyed the mechanic of having to make different kinds of shells using the drops from each run, would love to see this be turned into a full game. Also, the music, sfx, and art were super on point and made everything feel polished, great work!

THANK YOU SO MUCH AHHHHH :D

Also I appreciate the feedback, the reason it's 5k was my friends kept speeding through the game and got to 2k in no time so I increased the amount to 5k to make the game last a bit longer. I know game jam games are typically pretty short but I wanted to make sure that the play time of the game was still decent. Did you max out all the upgrades?

In this game you play as a car on the highway carrying a single piece of luggage. If the luggage falls out of the car, you explode (which is pretty funny lmao) and the game restarts.

The problem is that for me a bug caused the luggage to fall out the instant the game started, so my experience was essentially: spawn, explode, spawn, explode, repeat.

I was never able to get past this.

In addition, there's no audio or sound effects at all which left the game feeling pretty empty.

Though, the game graphics have a nice low-poly PS1 aesthetic that I love but since this is an Unreal Engine 5 game it ran super poorly on my PC. I'm honestly not sure whether or not these bugs are a hardware problem or an issue with the game itself.

There's barely any plot, and the use of the road trip theme feels pretty thin. Yes, you're on the road, but you never actually reach a destination so I'm not sure that it fully delivers on the theme.

Between the game breaking bug and the missing audio, I wasn't able to get much out of this one, still, it looks cool!

Holy shit, this was an experience.

I knew going into it that this game was going to have a unique take on the theme, but I was genuinely surprised by just how good the writing, atmosphere, symbolism, and philosophy were.

Where do I even begin?

I'll start with a developer quote: "I'm drawn to things that people tend to overlook, or even see as ugly" - Broody

That philosophy is evident throughout the game, where you play as a barnacle which is a filter feeder that attaches itself to a rock or a ship and grows from there. Throughout the game, you essentially have one goal which is to survive. You're tasked with eating microscopic food, hiding from a terrifying fish, and holding out as long as you can against a human whose job is to scrape you off the ship. Even when you're scraped off, as a microscopic speck you can still find your way back to the boat.

The concept alone is extremely unique, I've never played as a barnacle before and it made for a refreshing experience. The use of the theme is excellent. A road trip usually involves someone (or several someones) traveling from one destination to another with events happening along the way, and that's exactly what happens here, just reimagined through the eyes of a barnacle.

I really enjoyed the gameplay even with it being as simple as it was, my favorite part was when I was roaming the sea as a barnacle speck. It's also worth mentioning that thanks to Unreal Engine 5 the game looks visually stunning and impressively realistic. My only issue was that it didn't run especially well on my lower-end PC so the textures and graphics ended up looking a bit blurry on my end.

and the audio, oh my god the audio. It captured both the beauty and the terror of the sea and of being a barnacle. The ocean sounded serene, the food sounded delicious, and the fish and scrapers sounded terrifying.

Overall, this was one of the most impressive game jam games I've played. The writing, the atmosphere, all of it.

Great job!

While the game is extremely cool looking and has some interesting concepts and mechanics, I do not feel that it really matches the jam very well. The theme was road trip, and the only part of this game that acknowledges that is the very beginning, where a car crash cutscene plays. After that, you're just navigating untextured gray arena of rooms while doing extreme high-skill rocket jumping and air strafing. There are no vehicles and there's no real sense of a journey/destination. It feels like a separate game with a road trip intro slapped on.

The concept itself is neat, it's a clever twist on the usual platformer formula and the physics look genuinely for people who are into precise high-skill movement. But I couldn't really get into it because the difficulty ramps up fast. I wasn't able to get past the first 10% of the game and the jumps demand really specific timing and angles. To be honest, I had a cuphead journalist moment.

I think my biggest issue though is that there's no audio at all. No music, no sound effects, nothing. This really hurts a movement-heavy game like this because sfx are what can help make movement feel smooth and satisfying.

TLDR - While the game has an interesting concept and some cool mechanics, I feel that it does not match the jam at all. It has no audio whatsoever, and while the gameplay mechanics may be fun to some, I found them extremely difficult and could not get past the first 10% of the game due to the sheer difficulty.

That being said, I don't want any of this to come across as discouraging. Making a game at all is hard, and making one within a tight time limit is even harder. Despite the issues I ran into, what this developer managed to put together is genuinely impressive and deserves a lot of respect. It's clear a lot of effort and care went into this project, and I'm looking forward to whatever they make next.

Upon starting the game I was a little annoyed that it was windowed weird, and I couldn't get it to fullscreen or resize so this definitely impacted my level of enjoyment. That said, the title screen music is freaking awesome. After starting the game, I noticed one small issue: the screen was clipping as a lot of the background assets flew by, and with the car moving forward while assets zipped past so fast, it made it look like I was moving a lot faster than I actually was.

As for the actual rhythm game segments (aka the meat of the game),  I was mostly just confused. I didn't have any trouble getting through either of them because it didn't seem to matter if I actually pressed the buttons in time with the song. I could just spam and still damage the enemies. I had no way of knowing if I was doing well or poorly and the SFX for punching enemies didn't really sound like a punch it was more of a ding.

Besides my issues with the sfx though, the music was awesome! I loved all the songs, though I was a bit annoyed by the little radio interrupts between each one. I take it they were supposed to be funny, but I guess it's just not my sense of humor. The concept seems solid though, you play as a couple heading on a romantic getaway to the moon and you have to beat up any monsters that get in your way. I think this is a pretty creative use of the theme, since any road trip has both a destination and stuff that happens along the way.

All of the game's art looked beautiful, the character sprites and animations, the backgrounds, the title screen art, all of it was freaking awesome and is what I would expect of Nathan. I especially loved the little alien enemy. The only real issue with the art was the screen clipping and speed perception problem, I mentioned earlier.

Overall, I definitely enjoyed the game, though the rhythm gameplay could use work and it'd be better off without the radio interrupts.

The lack of any music and SFX has me so disappointed. I enjoyed the peanut man cutscene though, I found it hilarious and sent a pic to a friend of mine. Why does he look so much like Daniel Larson? The controls felt smooth, and I laughed my ass off at the death explosion. It was also funny as hell that when the cops caught me, I still just exploded lol. I was disappointed that the only location I got to visit was the peanut man, the itch page showed screenshots of other locations but I never got to see them in-game. The pixel art style was nice and unique looking, it looked as if you referenced a lot of real locations and turned them into pixel art. Since we traveled on the road to a location, I'd say this met the road trip theme decently, but I was a bit confused about the actual concept of the game. Is it just to avoid obstacles or what? 
Though I enjoyed the game, I have to dock a star because I experienced a game breaking bug. Everything besides the car, the cops, and the potholes disappeared. I could see this being a really cool game if more locations, cutscenes, and obstacles are added, along with some gosh darn music and SFX. Cool game!

The lack of music was frustrating, it really would have added to the atmosphere. Also, why are we driving in a black void? There's no story or setting here, just a car going as fast as possible while dodging other cars. There's no beginning or ending. I thought the car crash noise was funny, but the game just does a cut to black and then the game restarts. What is this, the Sopranos finale? Most of the SFX were good and on point, but the engine noise got really annoying after a while. My biggest suggested change would be to streamline the acceleration waiting for the car to go up from 0-50 then 50-100 is super boring. Overall the game really needs music, some kind of plot, and an actual setting. Besides that, everything controlled nicely and I didn't experience any bugs, so it was fairly enjoyable!

This was a very silly little game, and I mean that in the best way possible. I really enjoyed the music and all the funny SFX, and the opening cutscene was funny as hell. The gas station mechanic of buying upgrades to boost your car's health or speed was a fun addition, and dodging obstacles while trying to get to the next station kept me locked in. The road trip theme fit this game really well overall. The art style was consistent and cute looking, and I especially loved the little gator character in the shop I'd love to see more of them. My only gripes are that the boost being on left control felt a bit out of place compared to the other keys, and I wish the ending changed depending on your score to give a bit more incentive to play for longer.

The first thing I noticed upon starting the game was that music was a bit loud, but everything else about this game was super cool! It has a really nice art style, I especially like the pigeons simple character design. The tutorial was super helpful and made it easy to understand how to play, and the gameplay itself was engaging. After a bit of time I got the hang of it and was able to safely guide the poor pigeon home. Very cute!

Pretty neat little experience, I enjoyed the background music a lot. That said, I think the game could have benefited from some more SFX. Overall though, the car controlled nicely and the dialogue felt natural, not too invasive. I do think the collisions with obstacles could be improved though, I kept taking damage when I swear I wasn't touching them.

Could use some music and more sfx, but I enjoyed all the characters and the little car minigames! I love resource management so this was super fun, great work!

Holy peak, this should be on steam. Loved this, great work team!

Wow Wow Wow Wow.
This game is ridiculously addictive and fun, GREAT FREAKING JOB GANG!

Concept - 4 Stars: I really enjoyed the concept of running cargo during an apocalypse. The gameplay loop is excellent, it's got that Vampire Survivors/Survivor.io vibe where the core loop feels endlessly replayable. Being able to gradually create and improve your "build" while also having to plan accordingly for each trip is a great way to make your game super addictive and replayable.
Use of Theme - 3 Stars: When I think of a "road trip", I typically think of a group traveling to different, new locations. In this game, you just repeatedly go either to the left or the right. That said, planning a drive and deciding who/what to bring along is a core part of any road trip, so I think you should get points for that.
Enjoyment - 5 Stars: THIS IS WHAT A GAME JAM GAME SHOULD LOOK LIKE! It's something that's super fun, easy to understand, but challenging to master. I sat down to play and within a few minutes I understood the whole loop without needing to read any instructions. All I have to do is get from point A to point B while maximizing my cash and improving my build. It's arcadey, relaxing, but also challenging as you progress further. This is exactly my type of game.
Visual Aesthetic - 3 Stars: For a game like this, visuals typically can take a backseat while the gameplay is the main focus, so it's alright that the game doesn't have super crazy art. That said, the enemy and money designs are super repetitive and I think more visual variance and a more cohesive art style should be a high priority if this game gets further development past the jam.
Audio - 2 Stars: My biggest disappointment with this game was the lack of music, it would have added a lot to the overall experience. The SFX are solid though, everything felt responsive and it all matched with the gameplay.

In short, I loved the game, and I would love to see it get updated and further developed in the future.

First and foremost, I want to highlight 4 things that I really enjoyed about this project.

1. The character portraits (especially Timmy's) all look great and super professional, nice work!
2. The backgrounds have a distinct, almost crayon look that gives the game even stronger visuals paired with the previously mentioned character portraits.
3. The menus and UI systems were responsive and easy to navigate.
4. The dialogue and banter between characters felt natural for the most part and was well-written.

Now, let's get into the grit.

This project felt much more like a novel than a game, the vast majority of the experience is text on the screen and there's barely any meaningful interactivity, which is what makes a game fun. The premise of a small group of friends stumbling into a spirit world is a decent hook, but you did not develop it much beyond the cat and car transformations.

To make matters worse, without a solid autosave, restarting after a bug or mistake means re-clicking through a ton of dialogue, which made the pacing feel extremely sluggish. The dialogue choices also felt like they had no weight to them, as I would pick an option only for my character to pretty much ignore my choice a minute later.

My biggest issue with this game was the driving sequence, or lack thereof. This seemed like it was supposed to be the game's core gameplay moment, and it straight up didn't function. I don't know if this is a bug or if I did something wrong, but Tabby's guiding amulet never appeared, and the left/right arrows didn't respond to me clicking or pressing buttons on the keyboard. This resulted in me reading all of the game's setup and then not being able to actually do anything. Excuse my crude comparison, but this game felt like someone forcing me to watch a countdown and then kicking me in the balls the second it reached zero.

JUSTIFICATION OF STARS:

Concept – 2 Stars: A group of friends discovering a spirit world is a common plot setup, and I didn't feel anything unique was done with it here. I did enjoy the cat though, so I gave you an extra pity star.

Use of Theme – 1 Star: The "road trip" is just the characters driving to the forest, which they then stay in for the rest of the game. If driving to the forest is a road trip, then me going to the gas station to get a Monster is also a road trip.

Enjoyment – 2 Stars: Personally, visual-novel gameplay is not really something I find fun in a game, especially if said game is a part of a game jam. I am usually hoping for something highly interactive, and this wasn't it, chief. The game felt more like a chore than something fun to do.

Visual Aesthetic – 3 Stars: This is the strongest category by far, the portraits and backgrounds in the game looked super polished and distinct, and it's clear a lot of effort went into the game's art.

Audio – 1 Star: This was probably the second biggest letdown for me besides the lack of gameplay. There's only one song at the very beginning of the game, and then there's no music or sound effects for the rest of the game. Games like Doki Doki Literature Club lean heavily on audio to build atmosphere, and the silence in this game was part of what was killing the atmosphere for me.

In short, I think that you guys just really wanted to make a visual novel lol