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Hey! Thanks a lot for playing.

Yeah, a lot of people struggled with that one. You need an item from a different screen to get the unreachable shell. I’m planning to add a hint system in the next version that should help make these situations more enjoyable.

Cheers!

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed.

Yeah, a lot of people agree with you. I’ll rework the sparkle highlights a bit in the next version. I really the idea of a weaker/stronger sparkle actually. Thanks for the feedback.

Cheers!

Hey! Glad you enjoyed.

Thanks for the suggestions and feedback. Yeah, removing the sparkles once a screen is complete seems to be a highly desired change. I’ll see to it in the next batch.

Oh, and you’d like the vibes to stay summery? Good to know. Cheers!

Hey! Thanks a lot for the feedback. This is very helpful.

At GMTK, there were no highlights whatsoever and many people were confused about navigation or finding interactable items. To help prevent pixel hunting, I’ve added the navigation arrows and the sparkle highlights to show what is clickable. At the moment, that’s their only purpose. But maybe after you dig a place up and there are no items left on the screen, I could remove the sparkles.

As for the fishing rod… yeah, a lot of people struggled with that one. I’ll have to work a bit more on that shell. One thing that might help is a hint system, which I’m planning to add in the next version. Also, great job figuring out in the end how to get the shell!

Cheers!

Hey! Glad you enjoyed. And yeah, I’ll have to work a bit more on the navigation. Cheers!

Hey! Glad you enjoyed the vibe. Funny enough, I thought the bracelet puzzle wouldn’t do so well, but it turns out to be a favorite, haha.

And thanks for the feedback! I am definitely planning to add some responsive animations and cursors in the next batch. I’ll see what I can so about the full screen button as well.

Cheers!

Thanks for playing! Yeah, a lot of people seem to struggle with that one… You need an item from a different screen to get it. I’ll have to polish that last shell a bit so it’s leas cryptic and I am planning to add a hint system to help in these situations. Thanks for the feedback. Cheers!

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed. I might just expand this into a bigger and more polished game. Cheers!

Thanks! Glad you liked the vibe. The underwater scene is my favorite as well!

At GMTK, a lot of people mentioned they found it hard to figure out what’s clickable and many went pixel hunting. I tried to improve on that, so I’m really happy to hear the navigation felt intuitive.

And yeah, I definitely need to work more on the audio. Thanks for the feedback.

Cheers!

Hey! Really glad you enjoyed and great job finding all the shells. A lot of people struggled with the last one, so you are a real pro for finding it, haha. Cheers!

Thanks for playing! Yeah, a lot of people found it hard to get that shell… You need an item from a different screen to retrieve it and it’s a bit though to see. I’ll have to make it more visible and explain a bit better what’s expected there. But what I really think the game needs is a hint system. I’ll add these in the next version. Cheers!

Hey! Glad you enjoyed the game. And thanks for the suggestion. I’ll see what I can do to improve those “needle in a haystack” puzzles. Cheers!

Loved this one! Generally, there is a bit of learning curve in these kind of games where you have to familiarize yourself with the rules of each game, but I found these very intuitive and got the hang of them in the first playthrough.

I was checking the timer at the end of every minigame, but I was busy with my tasks mid-game. My worst performance was in flappy bird, haha. Otherwise, the laundry catching game was a bit of a hit and miss and I would usually catch only 3/5. I think I did pretty well otherwise.

Overall, a really fun game. Congrats!

Really fun game! 

I liked how your health and currency (time) were combined into a single mechanic. Initially, I tried being dynamic and jump/move around, but I found that less movement works better for me. Eventually my upgrades became too powerful, and I didn't have to move at all. There were some performance issues at some point as too many projectiles were spawning, so I had to stop upgrading around wave 6.

The sound effects were very well coordinated with the soundtrack, especially the bell.

Art-wise, I think you did a good job at using colors to your advantage to make the player and mobs stand out from the dark buildings. If you jump too high (which I didn't do much personally), the bright sky can get in the way of seeing things properly. Many of the mobs only had an outline though. Filling them with solid color would help with the visibility. You also use quite many hues in the player/mobs/projectiles sprites which is inconsistency with your background. You could use a similar consistent palette that stands out from the background in some way, for example, using warm colors for the background and cold ones for the sprites (or dark vs light, etc). Some of your sprites could also use a bit more work, especially the main character. On the other hand, I thought your Skapler and Graphire mobs had a lot of personality.

Cheers!

Cool game! I found 7 downs.

I don't really play or enjoy this genre very much, so I'm probably not the right person to give feedback here. You asked how you could make people better understand how to play, but my impression was that you designed the game with the intention of players having to figure out themselves what needs to be done. So it might be challenging to help players understand things better when the rules and hints are obfuscated by design.

The puzzles are quite challenging, and I only managed to complete the second one. I think that can work out great for the right audience. For low skill players like me, maybe clearer hints or a few easier levels with explicit rules at the beginning might help.

Cheers!

I really enjoyed this one! The art and polish are very good and I felt there is a good balance between skill and luck. 

The upgrades really made a big difference, and I could tell before the level even started whether my chance of passing is good or not. I made it up to level 7, although I got a whopping score of 4000+ on level 6, so I might have gotten further if I didn't buy a high risk roll... I just kept buying upgrades, but I'd change my strategy now to save some coins for later rounds to buy at least 1 good roll.

As for controls, they were pretty good. Maybe I'd like the cutting area to be a bit wider because I sometimes failed to make the cut in one move.

Cheers!

You have a very good atmosphere going on here! The sounds and scribbles are very well placed. 

The lantern with it's charging mechanic was really interesting and useful at first, but once you die and know the route you don't really need it. Still, it gives you something to do while you fetch the key, which is a nice touch. Instead of autocharging it, you could make the user have to manually charge it to keep them even more engaged (like in Amnesia the Bunker).

What I felt I needed the most was a setting to adjust the mouse sensitivity. The default felt a bit too twitchy for me and made it difficult to navigate and explore the environment.

Otherwise, the key room's door (might be other ones too) has quite a long range. I was trying to interact with some stuff on the wall, but I ended up closing/opening the door from across the room, which felt a bit weird.

Overall, I think the mechanics need a bit more polish, but you are very good at creating atmosphere. Cheers!

It's crazy how much detail and polish there's in the main menu. One of (if not) the best looking main menus I've seen in any jam. I've actually grilled every letter of the title brown, haha. Aesthetics and audio are top notch as well!

I haven't seen anyone else mention this, but the Start button does not work for me after I play a game, so I had to refresh the browser for each replay.

The gameplay is actually quite challenging! I first tried looking for visual clues, but I found counting in my head to work best. Skill issues, haha.

Overall, a really fun game. Cheers!

Cool game! I loved the variety and gradual introduction of new mechanics. It kept me engaged and wanting for more.

I found castle 1 fun. Maybe a bit too easy (level 1-12 was more challenging), but it was quite short so it's perfect as a tutorial. Castle 2 was a lot more fun and I had to try a few levels several times. I think you could go even further with the challenges and make things even harder.

Otherwise, the SFX are maybe a bit too loud compared to the background music. I'd recommend tuning it down a bit or adding a setting menu where players can adjust it themselves.

Had fun with this one. Looking forward to a real though Castle 3 maybe. Cheers!

The art and soundtrack are amazing! You managed to create a great Castlevania-like atmosphere.

I thought the enemies were well designed. As for the difficulty, I definitely found it to be on the hard side, haha. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I also have skill issues, so there's that. It felt like the mobs were designed around the player's weaknesses. The ground mobs shoot projectiles while you have a short-ranged melee attack. Sometimes 4 or 5 mobs would pile up in a small space and shoot projectiles in series so it's hard to close in on them. You have to jump towards the flying mobs and get close to them, but they deal contact damage, so you need to be quite precise with your moves to get in close enough to attack, but not close enough to get hit in turn. This makes the the game feel difficult to me personally, but I liked the difficulty. The double jump felt very useful too!

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to save my fox friend in the background, but I had fun trying. Cheers!

This looks amazing! The art and polish are top notch.

There is a bit of a learning curve, and the tutorial is a bit texty, but I got the hang of things by my second playthrough. Maybe I would like to have a few more decisions at my disposal than just discarding the pile vs playing the current cards. The upgrades are probably meant to do that, but you have to learn more about them to fully grasp their potential and how each affects the gameplay. Right now, it felt like the main gameplay loop might be less relevant to the outcome than luck and the upgrades you pick, which might discourage new players, as these are out of their control or current knowledge level.

I would like to have more dopamine boosts here and there to keep me going. Maybe some flashy bonus if you play a straight/flush of 3 or 5 cards in addition to the whole sequence/queue. Have more things to keep a lookout for to keep me busy, and rely less on upgrades and luck.

Curious to see how your game evolves. Cheers!

Love the idea! Very original and genuinely fun.

The tutorial did a great job at explaining what you need to do. I first tried playing without the tutorial and there's no way I would have figured out what I was supposed to do without it, haha. Personally, I found no bugs during my playthroughs either.

The only thing I didn't like was the scream when you die. I would tone it down a notch, but maybe that's just me, haha. Otherwise, it's a bit of a shame there's no reason to actually play the arcade games, as they are great and you clearly put effort into making them! I think you could consider adding some motivators for completing them, as you have a great potential for nostalgic moments there.

Cheers!

Great job on the art direction! The game looks really good and I could totally picture myself roaming around the woods as I played. 

Fun-wise, I would have liked to walk a bit faster. I think the main goal is to feel excited about exploration, but I often felt impatient to get to my next destination instead (which was usually an acorn). I personally was not that bothered by the grass acting as a wall.

I like how clear my purpose was in the beginning and how it helped with directions. Ok, I am hungry, I better search for food. There's an acorn, nice! The acorns then showed the path forward like breadcrumbs. Then there was a big body of water to quench my thirst, better head that way. Then came the night, and it was all over, haha. I don't think I played my first playthrough as I was supposed to. It looks like there is a bit of a time pressure on making it to a safe place before the nightfall, but I was more interested in exploring the forest.

The OST is pretty gloomy and fits the survival theme well, but your art style could easily pass as a cozy exploration game if you changed the OST as well. You built a pretty neat prototype here that you can take in several different directions. Congrats!

Charming game with a great soundtrack and nice visuals! I'll answer your questions directly.

Was the core card-stacking loop easy to understand? I found it pretty straightforward. You have a "cookbook" and a "formula" for everything, and you just stack all the cards you need into one pot. The guide/tutorial also helped with the prioritization of what to build next, but the combat element soon got in the way of me following the list. I got all the way to exploring the cave and forest, but I had to stop and get busy making more villagers to fight/do stuff. If you think the tutorial is important to follow through, it might be a good idea to slow down the escalation until the tutorial is over.

Did the game ever feel overwhelming or unclear? I am not 100% sure I understand the combat mechanics properly just yet. In my last day, I was going to fight some tigers I think. My guys were on their way to intercept them on the road, but when the day ended, all my villagers suddenly just died, then the guys on the road died, and that was that. Do you maybe need to reach the enemy base by the end of the day? If not, then I am not sure what happened as I never saw the tigers. I expected the mobs to start on their way towards my castle like an old school tower defense game and for my fighters to meet them halfway. Anyway... I probably wouldn't have survived the fight either way, as a pop-up decision I made turned sour and I lost all my villagers except for 2, haha! That felt quite drastic at a point where the enemies are much stronger, so the fight was already lost. But maybe that's just something you have to learn throughout multiple gameplays.

How many days did you survive on your first run, and did you feel like starting another? I got to day 7 I think. When the tigers attack. And I definitely had fun and would play again! Honestly, this isn't really a genre I play a lot, but I still had fun. I think people who regularly play this genre will have a blast with your game.

Cheers!

Very fun game! I got up to level 3 where I got snipped down pretty quick. The gameplay is reminiscent of Binding of Isaac, where you move from room to room in search for the exit, but instead of perma boosts, you pick up weapons with limited amo from your fallen foes. The mechanics have been polished well, and it's really fun shifting around and outmaneuvering the enemies. There is also a very unique screen-in-screen look, where you play looking at a monitor. The cutscenes between levels are pretty amazing as well!

As feedback, there were a few minor things that were not immediately obvious to me:

• When the game loaded up, it took me a while to realize I had to press something for the screen to turn on
• I did not realize for a good while that you can zoom in on the screen, so I played a few runs with my face real close to the monitor, haha
• For some reason, I kept pressing the spacebar and turning the in-game screen off at the worst moments at the beginning.
• In my very first level, I did not immediately recognize the exit and kept searching the rooms.

Once I figured these out, the game got much better on my second run. Cheers!

This was a lot of fun! The puzzles are well thought out and novel, with something new to learn or discover in almost every level.

I got as far as level 18, where unfortunately I got stuck, as I somehow managed to teleport myself into the cage on the left and get everything else outside of it, so I could not get out anymore, haha. Otherwise, the wall blocked the sight in one level, but I managed to get around that.

Cheers!

I really liked the art and especially the background! I love water gliders as well, so this clicked with me right away.

The ripples are a nice touch, but they can make things a bit difficult to see at times due to the thin legs. This is not a big problem though, as I always knew where I was heading. Would have liked maybe if the left/right rotation was a bit faster, but that's not really an issue either as the game is quite easy. I would like to try a higher difficulty! 

Overall, a lovely game. Cheers!

Really smooth gameplay and great soundtrack! I think I went on a few extra runs just to listen to the OST a bit more haha. There is also good variety in the obstacle waves.

The upgrades are really useful, but they make the game a bit too easy as I feel like I could keep going forever with the shield upgrade. Maybe the difficulty could gradually increase or the health pickups could be less abundant (or buy them in each round instead of making them permanent). The speed increases after a while, but when you bump into something, you slow down again, so you can safely recover the lost health in no time.

Overall, the game feels really fun in the beginning, but you reach fatigue eventually as things become too easy. If there were more challenges, this could become quite addictive. I can especially see it as an infinite runner kind of mobile game. Cheers!

I love these type of games! If you ever decide to add more levels, I'll definitely play them, haha. Cheers!

Really fun game! The time limit is just enough to beat the level set, so you need to actually get skillful to beat them. Each set has 5 levels, and there's usually 1 that is a bit more challenging until you get the hang of it. The difficulty was just right for me, although the Ctrl key kept messing with my browser near the end. Congrats on your submission. Cheers!

Thanks for playing and for the tips! Yeah, I actually added that improvement already. Just waiting for the jam to end and I'll push an update. Cheers!

That's awesome! Thanks a lot for playing. Cheers!

Loved this one! I was cheering along with the worms at every win. Great game!

I was going to say this feels a bit easy at first, but then things got serious, haha. I lasted up to 82 seconds. From overconfidence to skill issues all within a minute. 10/10 great job!

Very charming game! You managed to add quite a lot of variation and mechanics given the short time frame. It's hard to overlook sometimes, but the game is also really polished. I always knew what needed to happen next and never had to question what the next step is. The art looks amazing too! Cheers!

Cool game! Removing the platforms one by one is a clever way to implement the theme. I guess I should have planned my route in the 5 seconds before the level starts, but I was just eager to get started, haha.

Wow, it's amazing how much you managed to get done in such a short time. Each level introduces something unique and the AI adapts its strategy very well to layout changes. The art and audio are great too! Overall a very good game already! I have to check out pico-8 one of these days...

I can't explain why but I found this quite charming. I could totally picture being the gerbil looking around for items. There's not a lot to do, and there was obviously no time for polish, but I can see what you had in mind. Cheers! 

Thank you for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed. Cheers!

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed.