itch.io

Digging the concept.
A lot of the card art is super cute, you can tell effort went into the artist girl in perticular.

It's a shame that the game doesn't appear to have a proper ending. I did a couple runs with different dev' compositions but a final score screen would have really tied it together and motivated for a couple more runs.

Good lord, the polish is unreal. Most impressive submission I've got to play so far. By a long shot. Bravo. 

Custom(?) music, voice acting, opening cutscene - etc- Art's absolutely beautiful. Even the page is stunning. 

Only real complaint I can voice is the ending - or lack there of. Considering how elegantly the game starts, it ends rather abruptly. ( asuming I it didn't simply bug out for me ).

Tutorial didn't work for me, so it did take some button mashing, some trial and error, but I eventually figured it out.

Character art is cute, and I enjoy the concept, would have loved to see how it could have come together with some more dev' time. Especially since I worked on a point'n'click adventure with a very similar premise too at some point - but I just couldn't make it work, myself.

Very impressive with the terrain manipulation and the water physics. Loving the flat shading of the enviroment, and am a big sucker for the 2,5D look.

 Also challenging - if there's an actual win screen, I couldn't reach it.

I think the ability text could have profited from not having a transparent background - maybe it's just me but I found it somewhat hard to read - took a lot of squinting during my first run to figure out what my units do exactly.

Would have also loved to see the ability to torate the camera to a less steep angle to get a better view of the exact elevation of the enviroment.

I'm allways super stoked when someone shows up to one of these jams with an actual 3D game. Takes guts, and I think it payed off. Maybe most unique game I played during this jam so far.

Is there a way to get past the barrier blocking off the corridor?

 Beautiful art. Really appreciate the ammount of animation, all the bouncyness of things and the animated avatar. You easily could have gotten away with less.

I'm glad I went for a second and third run, else I missed out on some enemies and items. With the stuff you already had, you propably could have tacked on a couple more rooms.

Really love the 2,5D ethetic. Something I really want to cut my own teeth on eventually, but never managed to be brave enough during a jam,

Good news! If you let the timer run out nothing actually happens, so I guess the asteroid must have missed the earth and no one had to die :P

Do I get credit for finding a secret fourth ending?

Character art and animation are super cute. Would have loved to see what this might look like with more dev' time.

Took me a while to figure out what's going on, but after the first run plays surprisingly well, despite some sparse feedback.
I expected the nobleman's run to be the most gimmicky, but I found it to be the strongest by a longshot. Took me some repeat attempts with the warrior and strategist.

Really appreciate the animated intro and transition sequence. Not the type of thing you get to see a lot during these crunched projects.

I'm struggeling with the bridge level, what's the trick here, if you don't mind me asking?

Is there a way to restart the stage when I run out of  jumps and I get stuck, besides refreshing the page?

Art is super cute.

Getting the final weapon upgrade is very satisfying, just wished there was more stuff to spend coins on.

Only bug I've encountered is that on your second run ( after a win or game over ) enemies stop spawning about 2 minutes in. But refreshing the page fixes that.

<3

I allways keep my eye out for ant-based games during jams (there allways are some) and this was the first one I ever played that was a tower defense.

Love the sprite work, all the ants are super cute - except for the spider, that one's made from nightmares.

With more dev time, I would have said the game needs more tracks / levels, 'cause once you got a good team, its basically a solved equation. That said, I appreciate that the game wasn't punishingly hard.

Love the end screen, and appreciate that the game actually has an ending, once my team was all leveled up I was worried that it was going to continue endlessly.

Beautiful art. Immensely pollished. I don't understand how some of you do in such short ammount of time.

Had a really good time with this one. Like others have pointed out already, not too hard to create over powered loadouts - and I'm not sure passive healing items are working, atleast I never managed to get them to trigger. Either way, good time. I might steal this entire concept for a future jam.

Don't know if the artist is on your team, or you got this from an asset back, but quality visuals.

Sound was weeeirdly quiet for me. So quiet that I only figured out on my third run that there was music at all.

Sadly the game just eventually ends, not sure if intended or not, but I wouldn't have minded bashing skeltons for a while longer, experimenting with builds.

Did the enemies in the thumbnail actually make it in, or did they got the axe, 'cause I never encountered anything but skelingtons. Just wondering.

Those faces were my favourites.

Good chuckle.

I hope I'll be as zen when the end comes for us all. 

 Beautiful art. Bit of a bummer that all the f u n choices (IE crime) result in an early ending.

Question: Is Ms Penny a real game? I need to know now.

The hand drawn assets were super charming, would have loved to see the entire game comitted to that look. Would have loved to know what this could look like given more dev' time.

The triceratops actually reacting to your pressence was a cute detail <3

If you've made it here to give our game a chance, thank you very much, and to avoid getting stuck, please take a look at the WALKTHROUGH / GUIDE posted in the comments below the game itself :)

WALKTHROUGH / GUIDE

- Like your Sticky Note suggest you should start with checking your Mail.
You may or may not use the audio player on the right hand side for some music.

A ! next to the desktop icon will notify you whenever new mail arrives.

Should your internet go out, you'll have to re-enter your WLAN password that you'll find in your Password file inside your Explorer folder.

Inside your mail box you'll find a message from Mark reminding you that the deadline is ten minutes from now - so keep an eye on clock on your taskbar. After ten minutes submissions are closed and you failed. That said, the time limit is very lenient.

Another mail from Alex tells you to send him a direct message where you can ask him for help.

- Click the Chat icon on your desktop -here you can get hints from your mates by typing out certain keywords and phrases. At this point, et's ask Alex for help.

He'll instruct you to go recover the EngineBootstrap.dll from inside one of your many desktop folders - you'll find it inside GMTK2026_Final-Real.

Afterwards tell Alex 'I am done'. Now' hell walk you through the process of compiling the game. Place the .dll inside a game folder and run it through the Compiler on your desktop to build an .exe.

Jamie can help you with the following steps aswell.

First issue you may run into is that the compiler tells you the folder is invalid - you'll have to find the most up to date build of your game. After some trial and error you'll find that to be GMTK2026_Build3.

If you place the correct folder including the .dll inside the compiler an error will inform you that 'ALLOW_GAMEJAM_SUBMISSION' is set to false.

Open the .dll find the correct line of code and set it to true.

Now running the folder through the compiler again should work and result in your game's .exe.

Let's tell Alex 'I compiled the game' as promissed earlier. Time to upload the game, Casey can help us with that.

- Time to upload the game. Open the Internet and navigate to scratch.io. Click the Submit Your Game button and be met with a Login screen.

You' sticky note reminds you that you can find your login information inside a desktop folder labled Explorer. Open the Passwords file you'll inside. Turns out you have your Username written down but forgot your actual password.

Enter your username - user123 - on the login screen and request a new password. A new password will be sent to your eMail inbox. Open the relevant mail and download your new password.

It will be saved to your Download folder that you'll find in your Explorer folder on your desktop.

Enter your new password - superstrongpassword55 - on scratch.io to get to you'r game's submission page.

- Place the freshly compiled .exe here. 

Don't forget that Casey will help you with the rest of the submission process. Open chat and ask Casey for the game's title, genre, description and so on.

Make sure to copy the answers as accurately as possible. Punctuation matters!

Once done, you've successfully submitted your game, and hopefully on time.

Hey, thanks a lot for giving it a shot and getting so close to the ending.
After a bit of late testing myself, it was propably an issue with the submission page being a bit to precise. 
You get the submission details from your contact 'Casey' and if you don't copy them exactly you can't upload the files.
Certainly something that required more testing.

Ha, genius recognizes genius! It's good to know that we aren't the only ones with these naming conventions when it comes to our projects^^

Congratulations on the top ten spot in Visuals, super deserved <3

Super impressed whenever someone shows up to one of these with something actually 3D.

Game Jam theme nailed in both concept and execution as far as I am concerned. Bravo!

Such a silly and low-stakes concept. I love it. The character art is cute and your thumbnail and sticker book look just amazing.

Only critisism - obviously the lack of audio. 

Can't come up with anything other to complain about.

The racoon - both in game and on your thumbnail - are absolutely adorkable. Good job on the animation work as well.

At first I got caught off guard by the size of your sprites, but I actually dig it. If I may ask, how exactly did you do the enviroment? Is it actually a 3D space?

Sadly, even after about twenty attempts, I couldn't finish it, so no idea if there's an end screen. Near everytime I tried to wedge myself past the creaky floorboard in the bedroom(?) I got stuck in the level geometry and got softlocked, forcing me to refresh the page. That last cookie eternally out of my grasp :[

Amazing! Kudos to the artist(s).
I adore the entire presentation. Alice's sprite work is great, and wonderfully evokes John Tennil's original illustrations. I feel so bad for her everytime I feed her a biscuit and see her lose her mind as a result.

 The Queen of Hearts' design is badass. The background and UI elements are on point.

I don't know if your title / logo / font is an original design or not - but if so, amazing work on it aswell. The way you worked in the ornamented heart design :chef's kiss:

The whole thing just oozes professionalism and veterancy. Clearly not your first rodeo.

And bravo for having and actual intro with voice acting -  a lengthy one at that.

I'm blown away.

The only critisism I can muster is that the balance propably favours offensive actions over defensive ones. With Alice being limited by her dwindeling sanity, I didn't get the feeling I wanted to drag the fight out longer than anyway necessary and that it was best to just rush down the opponent piling on as much damage as possible. I don't think shielding or healing made much of a difference in my run.

All in all, one of the best experiences I had this entire jam.

Biscuit awareness campaigns have never been this entertaining.

Absolutely hillarious. Great rat illustrations. But over way too quickly :[

Well, atleast I can't accuse you of making it too grindy then^^

Certainly aint the pretties game I've played this jam, but propably the most ambitous. Everytime I thought it would wrap up, it kept going introducing new mechanics.

Gotta say, that giant bat boss was mighty impressive. The spider lowering itself from the ceiling was genuinelyunnerving .Though the giant biscuit fight aged me five years.

As janky as the rope swinging looks like, its surprisingly fun. Checkpoints are (mostly) placed very forgivingly. I appreciate the heavy focus on narrative. Gives the impression there was real vision behind this.

If this was done within a week, I'm mighty impressed.

Kudos to your artist. The presentation of this was amazing. Loved the UI work inperticular. It's small in scope, but appears all the more polished for it. Bravo!

I've played through this multiple titimes to make sure I get all the endings and I can say with confidence:

Yellow Ants OP, please nerf.

Did you actually make those ants yourself? Because for a weeks worth of work, those are some great looking and animated bugs. And kudos for making an AI that can actually put up a challenge.

I'm allready a sucker for ants (in games) so odds were I would enjoy this no matter what, but this is geniuenly a great-great-great submission. Bravo.

Allways super impressed whenever shows up with a 3D game to one of these.

What can I say but 'I wished there was more of it'?
The character design is adorable, and the running animation had me laughing out loud. Loved the way the hat bounces.
It's a bummer that it was over so quickly.

I enjoyed this graetly! ( As far as you can say that considering the subject matter )

I hope I got all the endings aswell.

This game feels like it stepped right out of the Dread X Collection series, which I'm a massive fan of.

Great esthetic, love the movement of the water and changing lighting / time of day. I'm allways super impressed when someone shows up to one of these with an actual 3D game.

My only complaints are the volume of the scream ( it's a jump scare, I get it, still ); and it doesn't have much to do with risks or biscuits, no? ;)

What amazing enviroments. And such fun choices for enemies, surprisingly threatening. Pulling all this off in but a week? I'm in awe. My only complaint really is the kinda... bare ending. Didn't affect my overall enjoyment much though.

Very impressive on a technical level. This clearly isn't you guys' first rodeo. Amazing looking enviroments, texture work ( especially that relief / wallpainting. Propably the best audio work I've encountered in the entirety of the Jam so far.

Sad that I got denied a fight with what looks like a really great N64 Zelda boss^^

I enjoyed this greatly. It took me until the very end to figure out that you could club guards with the Nudelholz, but thats on me for not reading instructions again.

The main character's sprite is wonderfully adorkable, the writing was a lot of fun.

I do wished you could skip dialogue, since I had to sit through it a lot ( granted, atleast partially to blame on me not figuring out that I could knock out guards and sneaking by everyone instead ).

No bugs encounter, no major issues.

Bravo!

Oh wow, I must have gotten veeery lucky then. I beat the game on my first run collecting only one or two curses without having put anything into luck. I was wondering whether the odds were not balanced a bit too much into the player's favour, but I guess if its really 60/40 I just had a streak. Gotta do the math on that one when I feel like it.

Your game is certainly both one of the most distinct and one of the most polished of everything I've played so far in this Jam. A mate of mine actually came across it initially ( he is a big 'souls games fan and your thumbnail reminded him of those ) and insisted everyone in our group check it out aswell. 

I got a good chuckle out of the ending.

Combat is pretty well balanced, to the point where the health upgrade feels a bit like trap ( not that its super expensive ). I think the economy could accelerate a bit faster, by giving the player a few more biscuits out of the gate. Pacing feels good by the mid game, but I think the time getting there could be a bit shorter.

Job well done!

Oh yeah, and may I ask what the odds are for aquiring a curse over a blessing?

What an absolute sleeper hit. Just finished my first run with the knight, but I'll sure as hell gonna play through it with the other two classes aswell.

Graphical presentation is amazing - texture work and lighting in perticular. Some strong creature designs in there. Top notch athmosphere.

A few more sounds could truely elevate this.