itch.io

I love the games you guys make. They are creative and well-put-together. The music is amazing. I have always wanted to try adding vocals to a game but never have, and this is really inspiring me to try writing my own music or at least vocals for existing music. This game did feel rushed and there were some components that felt that they needed more polish (such as 100 being too many applicants, being able to hire the same applicant 5 times at the end, and VFX & SFX for when the day was almost done). In your previous games you guys chose a very intuitive game theme and it was very clear how to play and what to do in the game. This game was a little challenging figuring out how to play the game. In terms of hard skills, the art, music, coding, all seem to be solid. The main difference between this game and the previous games was the design of the game play (including its intuitiveness). With school starting and 15 people in the jam, the real struggle wasn't your skill or anything similar, but it was the large team size, with a short jam duration, with the pressure of school starting.

Although this might sound critical, I want you guys to know that you are all very smart and very talented game developers.  All the hard components are solid, but the main component holding this game back is just the design and polish. However, you guys have a unique challenge in that you have 15 people working on a game while school is starting. I cant imagine anyone (myself included) making a game even close to the quality that you guys made with those constraints :)

Also for the artists and musicians, I am planning on learning basic 2D art (including pixel art) and music design. Are there any free videos (on youtube or elsewhere) or articles that you guys recommend I read? I have never taken an art or music class (or even a  proper coding class) so I am starting completely from scratch.

I really like how you get a new case each run. Unique and engaging game :)

This is such a fun and simple game. I love it. The only thing I would suggest is having the camera face the direction of movement (such as in Subway Surfers, Temple Run, ect.) other than that great and fun game :) 

Wow amazing art for this. I love how the aesthetic and the theming line up beautifully :)

I really liked this game. This is a great example of a well scoped and short game :)

I had some difficulty figuring out how to clean the room, but for the game overall, the art is beautiful and compliments the theme very well. I really like how you took the theme in new directions and used it to describe an unstable mother.

Fun game. I enjoyed the beat-em up style, I think there can be more variety in the gameplay. Most of the time I was beating up enemies by spamming the left mouse button because the hoards of enemies were very slow to attack. Even if the enemies were slow to attack having some with slightly different abilities (such as a ranged enemy or one with a shield to block the players attack head on) would add a lot more variety and depth to the game play. Another option can be a limit to how much the player attacks. With that said, you guys have a great foundation for a game and there were a lot of small but impactful mechanics that you guys added that I really liked, such as the player automatically moving to the next target to attack. Overall, good game and with a little bit more variety and increased difficulty to the combat this will be an amazing game :)

Wow this is a really interesting take on the theme. Very creative :)

Its ok. Developers dont have enough time to have a perfectly balanced game, which is why Easy/Hard modes, Skipping fights, and other components help a lot in games.  Your game is difficult but that isn't a problem since I can skip the sections which were too difficult. In the choice between leaning too hard or too easy I recommend too easy, but being too easy is still a problem (I had a game that was so easy that people thought that the game was broken). It is also important to  remember what you know about the game as a developer and what someone who doesn't know anything about your game will know.  

Even though your game is difficult I liked the characters and the unique ways enemies attacked, and I can tell you put a lot of effort into this! :)

As a Unity developer I definitely recommend making a web build since web builds make it easier for people to play, and making a web build in Unity is very easy as you go into build settings and switch the build from windows to web/HTML.  Other than that, the game is fun overall and as others have said it has a unique 90's/00's feel. Good job :)

I think the main confusion people have with this game is that instead of asking the player to determine if a statement is stable or unstable the game asks if a joke is stable or unstable. Jokes are naturally unstable, so by default all the jokes made are unstable. Even with that confusion the game is still a fun and unique game that also made me question if someone added something to my drink. Overall fun game :)

This game has a simple, but unique concept that is very well polished. Great job :)

Wow very creative game. This is a great example of a short fun game. Very well polished and incredibly fun :)

As a fan of Gravity Falls I find this game fun and interesting. :)

Very creative and fun idea. The rope mechanic is really interesting and adds a lot of dynamic to the game. Amazing job :D

Very unique game. This game felt a lot like "Getting Over It", where the goal is to move with the unique controls. One thing this game would benefit from is a bar at the top indicating how powerful your jump is. It is difficult to tell how much power your adding to your jump and sometimes I have to repeat sections of the game because I couldn't tell how much power in my jump I was adding. Other than that small addition the game is very unique and an interesting puzzle platformer.

As a civil engineer who works in construction I absolutely love this game. Every day I go into work and check if the construction site is safe or not. What is funny is that this isnt too far off from what you learn in class at University  (such as in statics). There are so many more ways you can make this more dynamic. One off the top of my mind is that the game tested the structures vertical load but not its horizontal load. Plus the forces applied to the structure are point loads, but you can also add distributed loads (for example, if you drop gallons of water over the structure evenly). If you plan to make this a commercial release (or even just developing the game further after the jam) I would love to help out using my academic and career knowledge :)

Out of all the unstable games that I have played, this is the most unstable one lol. It is a very unique and original concept that I am surprised no one else has come up with. You have a very creative mind, Great job :)

Cute and simple game. I was confused what to do at the beginning but when I read the description the game made a lot more sense lol. The one issue i had was that the hit box for the player seemed to be around the entire player rather than just the feet, which made knowing when to jump difficult since a log heading to the players head would seem like the log would go behind the player instead of colliding with the player. Overall fun, cute and simple game. Great job :D

oh ok that makes a lot more sense. I’ll give your game a try. I’d love to see the features :)

How did you get a new build for your game out?aren’t new uploads disabled during the jam period? 

I love the art style of this game. All the details beneath the road and in the scene adds a lot to the aesthetic of the game. This game is like happywheels but as a cozy cat game. I had some difficulty with reversing as well, but overall, great game :)

Its a little touch figuring out what to do, but once you understand the general components the game is more interesting and deep. Good job :)

This is an interesting game, but figuring out how to stamp things were difficult. What might help make the game more intuitive is having a VFX indicate when to change the stamps and raising the volume of the SFX. But once you understand how to play it is a cool game :)

This is a great game with some minor things that need to be changed that others have said (such as looking with A/D and a reference manual). Outside of some small mechanical issues I really enjoyed the humor in this game. It was very whimsical and silly :)

This was a nice cozy game. I really enjoyed the maze like levels and the nice jazz music :)

Hey I noticed that you worked on Ichigo Rush, but it is not showing up when you reply to other peoples games. The person who submitted the game (which is torlai ) needs to go into "Edit Game" --> "More" tab at the top --> "Admins" tab below, and add you as an admin. They will send you a link and once you are accepted as an admin your name will appear in the admins box, but torlai needs to check the box that says "Display as contributor?"

I really like the mechanics of this game. They are very unique and out of the 200+ games I have reviewed this year, I havent seen anyone come close to making gameplay where you click and drop items (in this case cars) over structures to destroy them while dodging enemies. While I really enjoy the game, my only suggestion is to shorten the timer as it is very long. But other than that, great game and great story :)

Normally my one suggestion would be to make the game easier, but the inclusion of the skip button allowed me to skip through difficult sections. This game has the battle system of undertale, the platforming of a metroidvania, the story of Isacc the Binding, and the difficult of Dark Souls with a blindfold on (but that is not a complaint at all since the skip button allows the tough battles to be optional). Great story, great art, great atmosphere, and great music. Amazing job overall.

Very atmospheric game, and I really liked how it kept to a theme of unstable through a nuclear reactor. One suggestion I have for a game is to have a restart button. I really liked learning how to keep the reactor from exploding, but I needed to hard reset the game if I wanted to play again.

The mechanic of shooting and the cards in the 1st person view is really fun and novel idea, especially with the unique atmosphere. I enjoyed taking down enemies and using the cards in unique ways. The platforming detracted from the games enjoyment as they were quite difficult to do in a first person view and had the game focus less on shooting enemies with the gun which would have made it a one-of-a-kind bullet hell game. Plus, it would have been nice to explore the secrets of the cards through playing/using them without a tutorial explaining it. Although this was critical, this is a really cool and engaging game that has an awesome atmosphere similar to "Mouse PI for Hire".

Interesting novel. I really like how you incorporated the sound effects into the novel. I know this is a novel, but it would be nice to see the characters more clearly in the beginning to help visualize the story. Other than that, great story and great art :)

This game is very metaphorical as the main boss is a Labubu and the mechanics in the game focusing on collecting items. This game reflects on capitalism and society at large as collection trends cause people to become unstable and travel different locations in search of Labubus and other collectables. I did like the room in  the middle of the game and how navigating sales and prices of collectables is like travelling through tunnels and narrow corridors until you find the right key (or price in this metaphor) to escape the shop. The shop even misleads customers by disguising unwanted items (like toilets) as more valuable items. I sympathize with the main character as my head also hurts when exiting these shops. 

In all seriousness I really liked the atmosphere and the art behind this game. Great job :)

This was a lot of fun. Having blocks that can only appear by clicking on them with the mouse is a really original idea and made the game a lot of fun. The things to improve with this game are small components, such as having WASD (and possibly interact with E) as controls, and slowing the text down since they disappeared too quickly. Other than those small things great game :)

Thank you <3, yah I noticed this on a run with Mady but forgot to fix it back then :/ There are a few other issues I noticed as well that I will fix once the jam is over. 

Thank you, best of luck on your next game jam ;)

Hello Sashasauce. Thank you very much for providing insights into the how the art was made. The organization of the art direction seemed to be similar to how the programming team handled communication, in that you guys had a clear separation of who did what and constant communication throughout the jam. Having someone with a shifted schedule seemed to help facilitate this separation of work. I showed this to my art team so that we can improve the art in our next jam. Anyways, thank you a lot for the advice :)

Thank you so much for the feedback. And dont worry that the text is really long, I would rather read more about successful game design and project management than less. The funny thing is is that we had similar working styles (with using discord and Github). but the main difference was the constant communication by staying on call, which greatly helped coordinate your team. Our goal was to get our MVP finished by Friday, but with confusion and miscommunication we ran into a lot of conflicting code and errors. This delayed us and greatly reduced the amount  I also really liked how you guys used the artists as the playtesters since they have little experience with the gameplay, but are also the typical reviewers for a game jam. 

Overall, it seems like the best way to coordinate a team for a game jam is to: 

1) Have clear designations of what components people are working one before even starting to make the game

2) Have some way of constantly communicating with your team (this can be through a call, working in person, ect.)

3) Have 1-2 people spend time combining all the files (to prevent conflicts)

4) have people who have not worked on the game play components (artists, musicians, ect.) be the ones to playtest the game

Thank you so much for this information. I will relay this back to my team to have a smoother workflow. If there is any other teamwork or coordination methods that you guys used to make such an impressive game I would love to know. This doesnt even apply to coding as I noticed in both this and last game you guys mixed both drawings and pixel art in you game, and I would love to know about the thought process behind that.

Anyways I am planning on doing Brackeys jam so hopfully I see you guys there. If not, hope to see you guys in the next jam :)

Thank you, yes I would love talk more! Our team also used GitHub, but we sometimes had conflicts when pushing stuff. We tried to solve this by one person working on the main game and the other working on making prefabs. Also based on what you said, it seems like on the last day someone was in charge of combining it all and taking everyone’s files and making the game. And since the game is well balanced, how much time did you spend playtesting it? Anyways I would love to chat and exchange ideas of how to manage a team :)

The mechanics system is really fun. I love grappling to a wall and getting launched lol. Great game :)

The art is beautiful and each level has its own unique minigame. Great job :)