itch.io

about 5 hours to get true ending w/ somewhat generous hint taking for cheese because i am not a platforming expert. what a ride. finally understanding the structure of the world and how to navigate it efficiently felt magical.

Ooh I didn't notice the sound effect at the end changes. Nea

The cursor is a bit weird. Holding spacebar turns it red, which allows you to drag objects. Pressing left on any tile on the left side brings you to the gift slot, then you can hold space on it, and press right to drag it out, as long as the left middle space is empty.

Originally there was a mechanic to pull objects during the day by holding space, so there was more synergy between day and night time controls, but it created too many bugs and just kinda overcomplicated a simple puzzle game, so I removed it

cute and simple arcade game! I like how the dead guys slowly clutter up the screen. Maybe the target could switch mid game (as long as there's an unmissable telegraph for it) to add a bit more intensity

that’s way more time of yours than I deserve so you have earned a Hints. I assume you’re missing D since that’s the cryptic one (or it’s just not functional, but I’m pretty sure it is)

Ending A - Have less than 300 Joy by the end of Day 8

Ending B - Have more than 300 Joy by the end of Day 8

Ending C - Blow yourself up with dynamite. Overrides other endings regardless of Joy value.

Ending D Hint - Break out of the simulation on day 8 

(Ending D Answer below) 

Using the blue spring, you can bounce yourself out of the map, but you will respawn in the bed.  But what if there was no bed to respawn at?

i assume doing the different minigames is supposed to fill up the blue meter but it’s not filling up, not sure if I’m just missing something, or if it’s just broken for me, or broken in general. 

Really cute art though, and the minigames are neat. Feels like the art one is missing something, maybe it could be like doing randomized connect the dots pages or something to make different pictures.

Even though I wasn’t able to engage with it, the incremental upgrades system seems really nice and polished too.

I feel like the siren is a little too realistic and stressful for what should is otherwise a goofy little creature game, lol

incredible creatures and overall presentation even if the gameplay is light, my favorite entry in the jam after playing them all. 

Just today I read a post online along the lines of "if you want to get somebody to be more engaged at an art museum, ask them to think about what painting they would want to steal" so when the ending happened I was a little flabbergasted

Great entry. I love that it's like a 2D deblob, really endearing art style too. Couldn't figure out how to get higher on the levels though, if I'm supposed to be doing parkour it kinda seems at odds with the game being supposed to be chill and contemplative.

Simple but cute concept. I liked the reveal that the prompts were telling a story, even if I feel like it kind of went over my head. Wish there was some kind of payoff for my answers, like having different ending dialogue if you lean towards a certain emotion, or something like that.

My experience in Rhythm Doctor really helped out here. Out of all the "count out the timing correctly" games in the jam I've played (at least like 10+) this is definitely my favorite, great presentation and gimmicks were entertaining.

Cute art and solid little gameplay loop! Could see this developing in either an idle game direction and/or a tower defense direction. After about a minute it got a bit stale, then I suddenly lost because my weapon cooldown was too long to kill all the ghosts coming. I dunno what I'd change to make it more exciting throughout, maybe different variants of ghosts that start spawning every 30 seconds? Fast ghosts, slow ghosts with more health, ghosts that steal logs, ghosts that attack you directly to stun you, etc

thanks a ton! I wasn’t sure if posting on discord would even work. I’m in the median ratings now so hopefully it doesn’t increase before the jam ends (not that I have any illusions of ranking high, but it’s still nice to be fairly ranked) definitely wanna make a post jam version with a random pool of maps rather than a set order and moving platforms are a great idea

okay this will sound insane if it's wrong but is that lancer from Ribbit???

really charming and funny little experience, I like when boss fights actually force you to respect the bosses attacks and this is a cool way to do that. though I accidentally spammed through the opening cutscene so I didn't realize hitting the boss actually reduced the time so I just learned the attacks and locked in for a minute and a half. woops

despite how simple the elements of this are individually the game feel of everything together gives me dopamine more than most other games in the jam, good stuff. I did stop playing after level 1 though, since it seemed like essentially the same thing but just longer, sorry if I missed out on anything fun later on though. 

also, small nitpick but usually in breakout hitting the ball on different parts of the paddle effects the angle the ball goes, in this the ball is effectively just a bouncing dvd screensaver logo. that's a lot less interactive, and frustrating early into a level when you need to break 1 block left but have no control over the angle.

cute game, wish it had more puzzle types, definitely hold onto this for future projects, it's simple but sleek, fake OS games are really fun and immersive ways to tell stories

Surely the person who left should receive the blame in this situation, I was not hired for my ability to count in my head. Really pretty art. The 3rd bad ending made me laugh out loud.

Thanks so much for the detailed write up and for playing all the way through! It’s super helpful and it really means a lot. I wasn’t sure if anybody would because it does kinda get borderline unfair at a point. I was really busy during the jam period so I wasn’t able to do as much playtesting as I would have liked, I only got to fully play through the loops once.

I don’t think this concept really has legs beyond this, but I’ll probably try and fix some bugs, balance the RNG a bit and add some polish for a post jam update. If I find the motivation maybe I’ll also expand the loop system to 10, but with loop specific boon and curse modifiers on top of the number upgrades so the loops feel more unique (I.e. “Curse: You cannot jump” “Boon: Falling from the bottom to the top of the screen makes you phase through numbers until you touch ground again” stuff like that.

an aim trainer, neat! art style is really cute, so I wish that there were more bombs so there was more art, and maybe a "disarmed" sprite for each bomb that appears for a split second after clicking on them before they disappear. I really enjoyed the patterns that appeared later on, but I think I'd have preferred if they showed up faster.  Since freeze bombs are tied to right click, I assumed it also affected only the bomb I clicked and I didn't understand it was a screen wide effect, so maybe a little blue tint or some kind animation of could get that across better.

huh, I don't think I've ever played a slowrun game before. It's an fun (and slightly frustrating) experience having to keep track of time while solving a puzzle. Really captures the frustrating experience of working an  job, finishing early, but not being able to go home early due to stupid arbitrary requirements. Basic Sokoban is a little cliche but I think it works to fade in the background for a gimmick like this.

That was super fun, I was surprised at the amount and pace of mechanics and how well they all were implemented. Maybe it's just a skill issue on my part but turning into a block in midair seemed much more difficult and kind of frustrating than anything else in the game by far.  Also would have been nice to have a proper boss fight at the end rather than just a cutscene.

Absurdly good presentation, especially for a solo entry. Similar to the comment below about daily "dle" sites, I feel like this concept would have potential as a jackbox style party game, it's already kinda got that vibe with the mascot character.

originally it was just gonna be the pot breaks and you’re just stuck while the cheery music plays and I thought that was funny. when I decided to submit to Trijam though I realized I had another hour to add another joke. I think I prefer the more simple version though.

Thanks for the detailed write up!

1. Basically yeah, never had plans to have a story element but now I kinda want to, and a potted cactus is my default character for game jam games cause I'm lazy

2. I was using a "spritefont" object for the first time, and could not figure out how to treat the sides of the I as ignorable (as in, each character is going to take up 10ish pixels of space and that's true for the I as well even though it's much skinnier) so I just added some dots to make that less jarring and to kind of give the font a bit of character. It is a hack solution and there's definitely a better one if I had time to find it but I kind of like it, lol.

3. I didn't know this was a faux pas! I love having all my platformer controls on one hand so close together. But yeah somebody else noted this, I'll rework the controls or add alternate keys if I update this game post jam

4. I agree, yeah. Most of this is just my lack of skill to execute this in my engine, but I'm sure I could if I sat down to figure it out.

5. Weird, are you holding shift rather than tapping it? The way it should work is that your dash is active while you hold shift for a maximum of 0.6 seconds, and for the duration you get a small propulsion but mainly your character speed is basically 10x what is normally, so you still have a degree of control over your character (which is why you have a slight increase or decrease in trajectory if you're rising or falling) I admit it's pretty odd but I grew to like it while playtesting and kind of forgot how obtuse it is. I have also had issues with people on other browsers having inconsistencies in gameplay so maybe this is that. 

6. I originally had some clockless levels which had more coins than average that I think maybe I should have kept because it creates an interesting dilemma on how long to stay in the level even though it's a pure time deficit. There are still interesting choices like that to make in the game regarding time cost vs coin gain, but I think it could be expanded on more. I don't know how I feel about mandatory death warps in the harder levels, I kinda wanted to show the player that it's a valid option to take the 3 second hit rather than the long way back to the elevator, but I realize that running into spikes doesn't feel like it should be the right thing to do intuitively. 

That’d take me like a minute but I don’t know if I can justify it as a bug fix. I’ll make sure to add that if I ever update the game post jam though!

Criminally low ratings at time of writing for this one, my favorite game I've played so far. Really cute little rule discovery experience. this kind of 2D immersive sim-ish thing is a really untapped mine of a genre I think. (It's also just satisfying to dig holes)

really well designed level, it's cool to have to ignore certain things and blocks as noise at first and then for the upgrades and return trip to recontextualize them. Fall damage could be communicated a bit better I think but I don't have any ideas for that other than maybe putting the game on a grid like Leap Year and that definitely has it's drawbacks

Really fond of this control scheme for bullet hell games.  Weaving through bullets with so much momentum is really satisfying. Great variety of bullet patterns and attacks. Made it to the second 45 sec level before calling it quits because the overlapping attacks just got to be a bit much and the levels seemed too RNG dependent.

blorgies...

fun little "I wanna be the guy" style game that's short and simple enough to not be too frustrating. I was worried about getting lost without a map but the design pretty well funneled me in a linear progression despite the multiple routes. Nice!

Smart choice to make this an endless type game instead of level based because I think if there were levels most people would rage quit level 1. Would be a good mobile game. Big flappy bird vibes (I consider that a good thing for the record)

I got NaN depth by flying left somehow so I'm taking that as a win

I had part of the minigame transition screen pillar stay on the left side of the screen which made the shield and whack-a-mole minigame difficult. My browser scale is 100% so not sure.

I really like the micro game format. I was impressed by the lack of repeats and how many there were. I guess my only complaint is that the visual clarity as it relates to minigames could be a bit better because some minigames I just didn't understand until I saw the minigame and some I didn't get at all, but that's difficult to do with just two colors. The shader is neat, are you willing to share what you used or did you make it yourself?

thanks! I was just gonna submit what I had because I wasn't feeling the spark anymore but then on the last day I had a bunch of ideas to make the game flow better and just grinded it out for the entire afternoon I think it improved it a lot :)

The random floor function is supposed to redirect you to the next sequential floor if it tries to send you to your current floor so yes it’s a bug that isn’t working, I’ll see if I can patch that before the jam ends 

fixed, sorry about that

Got a demon on my first selection on the last round rip

Usually I feel like a game with this much luck would be offputting, but having a core component of the game being knowing when to cut your losses when the odds are against you makes it feel very skill based. I do feel like siblings and king should maybe be considered more neutral cards since they force you to keep on playing or they're negative, but maybe having that as a 3rd category would overcomplicate things.

Fun gimmick, wish it had more levels, the last one is a bit of a jump in quality. Very economical art style, I kinda vibe with it.

Big drill is a specific gaming power fantasy I don't get to engage in very often. I always appreciate when you can really feel upgrades rather than just being +10% or so. Really good risk/reward mechanic because I have bad judgement and I kept dying constantly trying and failing to get a big haul. 

cookie mama! I really like the pixel art. I feel like some minigames could be a bit more unique from other ones.

Reminds me of Mosa Lina a bit. I really liked messing around with different biscuit combos.

Perfect synergy between gameplay and theme to make a game out of a dog jumping for treats. Really cute stuff.

I'm kinda confused what my goal even is, just to survive? I kinda feel like with all the objects I can yoink I should be able to sell them or something.

Unironically I really dig the art style. The game's vibe kinda reminds me of Mr. Sun's Hatbox. I did have a few bugs like crates colliding in a way that slowed my game down to frames so I had to restart, and the second time I played the house generated in a way that I couldn't get out the front door.