What a shame! If you feel like giving it another try, Shari's house is in the southeast corner of the map. She's inside her house, so you just interact with the house directly. The Mayor usually gives the most helpful hints of where to find everyone.
This was a pretty big project for us (there's more than there appears at first), so we stretched ourselves pretty thin and I think we dropped the ball on clarity in some places. That's why I'm thankful for your feedback!
I'm glad you enjoyed it! It sounds like you saw the calm before the storm, but did you see the "storm" at the end?
Yes, we're looking into the problems with the web build, I think that qualifies as a game breaking bug. Isn't that just how it goes? lol
We didn't get to watch any playtests of our game before submission, so we're really fishing for feedback. In particular, we want to know, how far did you make it through the game? Did you play it through to the end?
Wow! Getting reviews already! We didn't have time to watch any playtests of our game, so we're really fishing for feedback. In particular, we want to know, how far did you make it through the game? Did you get to the end?
Well, I'm glad you liked it enough to leave a comment!
Amazing polish, fantastic setting, I loved the humor (what I could read of the Japanese was funny), superb gameplay. The layers of the mechanics were not lost on me, the way you could make a platform permanent to spawn other platforms off of, or create a certain number of platforms in mid-air to extend your jumps. It was just fantastic. It's a shame that this game didn't rank even higher.
Just out of curiosity, how did you find this game? I was intrigued since it didn't show you as having submitted anything to this jam. When I checked your account, you haven't replied to any other games since a year ago, and didn't reply to anyone else in this jam.
The artwork is consistent, cute, and I think fits nicely with the genre of game you're going for. I did think it was an odd choice to have the map be a top-down perspective when the character is jumping towards the top of the screen and falling towards the bottom. It gives the impression that gravity is pulling everything south instead of down, or this village was built sideways on a cliff face. I agree with jnttzck that it was difficult to discern what was a platform I would be able to stand on, and what was just decoration, which is definitely not what you want in a game where missing a jump could mean losing tons of progress. I also agree that making a rage game for a game jam means most people won't see most of what you've made.
Fun premise, I'm always a fan of that Asteroids style of movement where ships can drift in any direction. I appreciate that there's a tutorial, and I liked that you could build onto your ship as the game was running, it didn't happen in a separate mode. It added an element of making repairs to your ship in real time as parts broke. I think the bullets could have stood to travel a bit faster, ships could nearly outrun my bullets, and it was very difficult to lead my shots enough to hit anything with the way everything on screen was maneuvering.
AI generated thumbnail and banner :(
The aesthetic is impeccable. Movement as the morph ball was very enjoyable. The rounds felt very quick, snappy. At first I was intimidated by the daunting amount of health the wall has, but the exponential growth on the player's side makes it not so much of an issue. There were many rounds where I was able to take all of one large enemy's guns all at once, so my timer would accumulate 40+ seconds in an instant, and the rest of the round would be 40 seconds of me standing at the wall holding left click. That seemed to slow the pace down in an otherwise high speed game. Purging didn't feel like it was doing much for me, the only noticeable effect was that I would respawn with 1-10 guns that often got shot down by enemies right away. I also found myself wishing the purge button was nearer the other keys so I didn't have to move one of my hands to find the 'P' key and then move it back.
Solid concept, reminds me of some PS2 puzzle platformers for some reason. Forgive the following battery of bug reports, these are some things I ran into during my time playing that I haven't seen anyone else mention here:
-Cthulu moves very slowly. It might make sense since he's so big, but I was left waiting for long stretches sometimes while I waited for him to catch up to where the fisherman was in the level.
-The collision on the physics props was a little wonky, pretty much every bridge I made by knocking a stone over shook itself apart as my character ran across it.
-I fell into the gap at the beginning before I understood I needed to make a bridge, and my character did not respawn at a checkpoint, requiring a restart.
-It wasn't obvious to me that I could control the cultists, an outline on them too might help.
-I died during the part with the pressure plates that released green gas, after already passing two pressure plates. The checkpoint placed me before the first one, and it seemed I couldn't get past it without activating it anymore.
-The hands were extra difficult to manipulate, it seemed like they would eat one of my inputs, and then there was a timer before I could interact with them again, at which point they would then work. That happened for every single hand, so every single hand had like a ~10 second wait tacked onto it
-There were a few puzzles that I solved by placing the fisherman on a box and carrying him to the finish with Cthulu (this is how I got past the green gas pressure plates). To be clear, I enjoyed this a lot, but it probably wasn't intended and could make some puzzles trivial.
Despite writing all these issues out in list format, my experience with the game was overall positive lol. Looking past the minor technical problems, the gameplay was good, the atmosphere was well constructed, and I had fun.
The camera was definitely too far, too zoomed in, and too sensitive. The ability to look up would have been a huge help as well. Funny idea but not the most easily played as it is right now.
I really liked the "robot inside a robot" premise (see: my submission). It was a little weird trying to match up where the laser was showing on the bottom screen to where it was going to appear on the green screen, since they were turned 90 degrees to each other, but then again, that was probably the point. I appreciated being able to see the smaller robots inside the larger robots, it served the laser dodging mechanic and it sold the scale we were working at. It takes a bit of time to get the robot on the green screen to switch directions, so if the robot was already in motion when it was time for a laser to appear, I ended up just leaving it to RNG whether or not I was going to get hit. The text from the character was a tad fast, and once the game started I didn't have time to read anything they were saying at all.
I absolutely love this, I sat down and beat all 40 levels, and it bears repeating that that's a lot for a game jam. I do believe you have invented a puzzle game of the same magnitude as Picross. I would love to see a level editor where users could create and share their own levels. You honestly might want to look into getting this patented, this is a real winner.
The idea and execution were great. I loved the colors, especially the way the light from the upturned pipe was scattered by the water. My only complaint was that I had camera sensitivity turned up to max and my mouse DPI set to the most sensitive, and the camera was still less responsive than I would have liked it.
Very cool game, loved the aesthetic. As some others mentioned, while I was playing I found myself wishing that I didn't slow down so much when I shrunk (though I think slowing down some is a good idea!), that the embers restored more flame, and that the some of the hitboxes were a little larger. I kept missing the candlesticks even though it looked like it should have hit, and picking up the embers was a little finicky.
Very cute, very reminiscent of old arcade titles. No notes, the game is good!
Cute game, the level design struck me as being fairly thoughtful. The two characters having different abilities, like the father being able to throw the son and only the son being able to jump, was a key part to making the levels enjoyable. I think this idea could easily be expanded on with more levels and new level mechanics as you go
I love the graphics and sound design of this, the particles along the top and the wires coming down just look great. I did have a few instances of a wire spawning in the mess of particles up top, so it was difficult to notice. The active management gameplay is fun, however once you're a couple minutes into it, it becomes very unforgiving of any mistakes. If one server breaks, that's 5 wires disconnected now and the entire system quickly overloads in a cascading effect. I also wasn't exactly sure what to do about more than one string of bad data. Typing one string after the other seemed to work, but a new string would appear before the first string was finished coming out, so I would have to wait until the first one finished, and then quickly catch up with the second string. In the case where two computers near the top of the screen were being hacked, it was possible to have two strings of bad data that were longer than the wire. By the time the first string completely revealed itself, some of the second string had already gone into the computer. If I didn't have the second string memorized while I was paying attention to the first string, then I just had to let the second computer get hacked.
I enjoyed this quite a bit! Before I realized you could open the gates on the second to last level, I stacked the animals on top of each other and had them carry each other over the fences, that was a fun moment where it felt like all of the animals' characteristics were coming together.
I felt that the size changing mechanic didn't play a strong role, each room could be completed at one size without needing to do much thinking. The poor lighting in the maze at the end combined with glitchiness from the camera clipping through walls at the smallest size added an artificial layer of difficulty that didn't feel intentional. It would have been nice to see some gameplay mechanics that incorporated the size changing more directly, and went beyond running and jumping. Also, the rules stated not to use generative AI, and I see that you're using an AI generated image as your thumbnail. It might be okay, since the thumbnail isn't exactly part of your game, but I would be careful with that to avoid disqualification.
I liked the level design, I appreciated that levels seemed to loop around back to the goal, rather than making me backtrack. I did feel that the obstacles weren't challenging because I could change size at any time. It would have been interesting if the player needed to reach some position first before gaining access to a new size, or if there were obstacles that would allow the player to pass through, but they would block the variously sized boxes you needed to carry. I also liked the music selection, not sure if one of you composed it.
Extremely well polished! I liked having to nestle my bases within the safe spots of the patterns, it made me understand what you meant by the cannon being too big lol
Btw nice game name lol
I'd love to see a longer level
I enjoyed the humor of this game very much, and the level design was pretty good, too
As Time Goes By was a surprise lol. I appreciate the effort in not using a premade game engine
I liked the the way that the difficulty increased, it's simple overall but pretty clever to link it to the height you reach. The movement is also surprisingly deep, having to manage double jumps and wall jumps. It's reminiscent of flash games I used to play as a kid lol, I could see this doing well as a mobile game. I like it. I'd love to see it with some graphics.
The premise of the game is really funny. I'm not sure if there are any crafting recipes in the game yet, but if there are, I didn't discover any. I did like the notes left around the room, they felt like they were probably hinting at something, but whatever it was, I missed it. I loooove the bit at the end explaining your plans for the game, that's so relatable lmao. The song that followed was... unexpected lol
I really love the idea behind this game, always a fan of multitasking. I did run into a bug (haha) where the dirt in front of a bug wouldn't disappear as it was digging. This meant I couldn't bring things back the way I came, as sometimes there wouldn't be a tunnel at all. It seemed to happen the most along the border of some texture, as I'd see straight lines and 90 degree corners where the digging stopped. Additionally, I was able to spawn one new worker for 10 dirt, but after that the button to spawn more disappeared, even though it seems like I was meant to have more than two workers. I got up to 66 dirt without the button reappearing, but maybe it wasn't dependent on that to begin with. Despite those problems, I still enjoyed the game!
The explanation was neat, it's cool to see how a simple but clever idea like that can pretty much build the whole game.
There's definitely some interesting gameplay ideas at play here, with regards to the different things you can do at different sizes. I was only able to get the star from the chess board, though I'm sure I could have gotten the one in the corner if I had given it more time. As for the rest, I'm not where they are. The level design does a good job of guiding the player, but I wish there was some way to see where the stars are. I didn't even know the chess board would give me one. I also wish I could look up lol. Overall, though, good effort for sure
As a Cosmo myself, I enjoyed this! I think the difficulty curve is good, and I think the art and sound design are great (especially that game over sound lol). I liked the writing for the character Cosmo, a shame he's only on the tutorial page. Good job!
Hey! Thanks for checking it out!
The first two tools just work by waving them over the part, and seeing if any of the parts react differently from the other three.
If you feel like giving it another try, here's a couple tips based on what I noticed during play testing (I consider these gameplay spoilers btw, in case someone is reading the comments before playing):-Not every tool will show a difference on every set of parts. If a tool seems like it's giving identical readings on a set, it probably is!
-It's better to use one tool at a time across all four parts, than to use all three tools before moving on to the next part. That way, it's easier to notice if one of the parts is giving off a different reading, because the other readings will be fresh in your mind.
-The difficulty does increase with each round, it's possible that the difference in the last round could be subtle, so you'll have to pay close attention.
Again, thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!
Very sad that the lighting was broken in this build! I think I wasn't able to find my way through the whole game, but I enjoyed the aesthetic and ideas you had so far. I think you're showing a lot of artistic talent with this game, and I'm looking forward to checking out the fixed version.
Stunningly complete game, I might as well have been a kid playing this on my PS2. My only critique is that the shark enemies felt unfair, like there wasn't really anything I could do to predict or avoid their attack. Especially in the last room with multiple of them. Other than that, I had a lot of fun with this game!
Really spectacular! I absolutely adore the artstyle and tone that you achieved here. It hit a similar vibe to Death Stranding for me, which I also adore. Just overall a fun mechanic, a really interesting setting, and fantastic presentation. No notes from me, I think you got it in one.
The game will always feel easy to you because you're the one making it. You know exactly how it works and what you're supposed to do, and you're constantly practicing it every time you test it. I think that's why NES games were so notoriously difficult, they had small teams with not many outside playtesters. I think as a rule of thumb it's better to err on the side of making it too easy for you, if you want it to be reasonable for someone else's first play through
