itch.io

this was a really cute game! Ferrah is especially adorable and i think that i had a lot of fun with shell crafting! it took me a while to get the hang of the controls, but once i did, i even ended up coming up with a pretty solid strategy for managing the orders. great job putting this all together into a fun experience!

i also have a few notes that i’d love to share:

• the game could have definitely used a few more sounds to set the cozy mood further! (or if there were said extra sounds, i couldn’t quite hear them)

• the mechanics and gameplay loop on display were solid and easy to understand! however, i also feel that there could have been more upgrades than just the ones for increasing the smelting speed & amount of furnaces and the player’s movement speed to keep things feeling fresh

this is honestly impressive for your first project AND first game jam! i have a feeling that you’re only just getting started. keep it up! :)

that said, i have a few things to note:

• the sound effects tend to be on the louder side and i feel like having a settings option to adjust that (or making the adjustment manually) would help rectify this and allow a bit more control on that end. other than that, the sounds themselves were lovely!

• your use of theme here is adequate, but as already mentioned, i feel like there’s a lot of potential to have the shell be more integrated into gameplay as opposed to simply being a plot device for the narrative. it kind of just… exists at the moment.

• without a clear tell of how long the waves are lasting, i feel that the gameplay tends to drag on for a while. however, i do appreciate that you added some new variety between the levels to keep things at least mostly engaging throughout!

• on the innovation side of things, i love how the red crab’s weapon upgrades itself over time (even if i do think that the second one of that bunch is a little on the sluggish side, but that’s more of a nitpick than anything) to keep up with the tougher and meaner crabs washing up onto shore. the different properties for the shots was a nice touch too!

• the art was really cute and added to the atmosphere! you definitely did better than you gave yourself credit for, and i think that’s worth something! considering that you also did this on your own, it turned out to be serviceable for what you were aiming to accomplish!

this was genuinely funny to play through! love the use of the acronym for the theme as well as the cartoonish style to the ✨succulent✨ ham.

i have a few notes that could make this experience even better:

• there should either be a way to change how the ground pound controls or at least an alternative keybinding for it. i say this mainly for the sake of accessibility—sometimes the Control key can be awkward to reach for some people!

• the music and sound are difficult to hear, even at full system volume. it was quiet to the point where i almost thought there was nothing at all. definitely try to tweak the audio settings around in-engine to make things more audible!

• when just starting the game, there’s a huge lag spike once the first wave spawns in. it didn’t cause too many other issues later down the line, but i think it would still be worth taking a look at just in case!

This makes a lot more sense now, thanks for the clarification! As the person who was in charge of putting the whole page together anyways (the actual game concept was by a different person on the team who I’m also going to note in the credits) I’ll definitely take a look at everything you mentioned. Truth be told, I think that I might have come off a bit harsh in my initial reply so I apologize about that on my end.

The feedback is greatly appreciated, but I do need to make it especially clear that no AI was used at ALL for the project, not even for the itch page itself. The rules of the jam would have strictly forbidden that in any form including on the initial page (and besides, I and others on the team aren’t big fans of AI ourselves either). Please be careful when making that assumption.