itch.io

This game is really awesome! I haven't gotten the chance to try every level yet, as I'm trying to only continue to the next one as I beat them, but it's challenging, simple, cute graphics and awesome music! 

One problem though - it's a rhythm game, but at least in Chrome for me, there is some major desync happening with the audio and the graphics. The game's audio ends up several beats behind where the graphics are and it makes it nearly unplayable at certain points. 

I don't imagine this is faulty code or anything - at least not on the game's end. It's probably related to Chrome itself, as I find it doesn't like browser based games on Itch very much for whatever reason. 

That aside, this is excellent, glad I got the chance to play it!

Not bad! The music is extremely quiet so I can't really speak on that, but the characters, while simple, are done well enough that they are quite cute! I like the ability for one character to give the other their ability using the buttons, that's a cool idea and it works well!

I didn't have the coordination needed to complete the second level, haha! 

great job!

I'm sad I didn't get the chance to play this sooner. This game is awesome! The pixel art is incredibly well done, all of it! The music fits extremely well! This game also fits the theme well too. It feels nice to play, the enemies and the way they work make total sense once you take the time to observe their reactions to being near you and everything. 

This game rewards patience and perseverance, but mostly patience. It really does feel like an old arcade cabinet game, or an old NES or SNES game. I'm really impressed by this!

The only thing I would say is that I wish there was some way to maybe get more lives? But the only way that would make sense is if there were more levels. If there WERE more levels, it would make total sense to hide 1 ups behind more of the doors though. The other thing is that I still got a game over message when I reached the end. I'm not sure if it's because I got a "bad ending" or if there isn't a good ending. It definitely didn't strike me as a good ending, at the very least, haha!

Either way, this is probably one of my favorite entries I've played in this jam. Seriously excellent job!

Also, kudos to making this in Pixel Game Maker MV! I've tried picking that engine up like 4 separate times, but I just can't figure it out. It's nice to see someone making a game with it though!

Really cool! Like the idea that the platform is connected to you. That was used pretty well, especially with the power ups, and I think it could be expanded upon greatly if you wanted! Liked the art and music as well - all well done!

Couple things. I like the boost jump mechanic, but the problem is that after it was introduced, it felt like most of the jumps required its use, which started to feel a little tedious, especially since it's slightly awkward to do (have to press up and down at the same time, rather than being able to switch off between the two in a given time frame, for example). For the long jump, I wish there was a little more feedback. For the vertical boost jump, you knew you did it successfully because there was a sound effect, but for the long jump, it sounded the same as a normal jump. Because of that, I wasn't sure if I was successfully doing it the first couple of times, which threw me off a little. 

That said, I think this is an overall really good game with some good ideas, good visuals, good music, and it makes for a good time. Great work!

I liked the way the little gun had a dual use - connecting light posts, and fighting enemies! The way it worked with the enemies made me think of the grapple from Just Cause3, if you've ever played that. Lots of fun, great art, simple gameplay that made sense. Great game! 

The one thing I wish was a little different was the feedback on getting hit. Like, there was a sound effect, but it was a little quiet. If he would shake, or if there was a flash or something, it would be a lot easier to notice that I'd been hit. 

Fantastic work overall!

I'd planned on making the boss be randomized between a set of bosses - one of which could have been human - but I didn't have time to do anything of the sort, haha. I'm glad you liked the music and art! Thanks for playing!

Thanks! I initially had that implemented, but it would start to reaaaaaaally mess with the collision system once you got to a certain size, so I cut it and instead made it so the slime hive mind gets bigger. The problem is that it's hard to notice, since you're not around to see it grow as you collect. 

Thanks so much for playing!

Good job with this game! It's straightforward and easy to grasp, but is challenging as well! I like the music as well!

Couple things. The timer, at least for me, was counting down quite fast. I see the game was made in GameMaker. Were you counting down using a timer -= 1 type of deal in the step function? If so, you may want to check the preferences of your game to see if it's running at 30 or 60 fps - it felt like it was counting down 1 second every 30 frames while running at 60 fps. I know that it's supposed to be magnets controlling the main object, so it's not supposed to feel snappy and responsive, but it felt almost too slow to change directions as quickly as was needed in certain circumstances. The punishments for hitting things felt almost too severe as well - A box would make you lose 6 or 7 seconds (based on the in game timer) which is a long time to be hanging in the air before you start falling again, A trampoline would double that time, and a saw makes you start the game over from the main menu... I think an option for either going to the menu again or restarting at the start of the first level would go a long way. 

The art of the game was just a little jarring to look at, to be honest. Sometimes, that sort of patched-together feeling works really well, but in this case, it just didn't look super coherent to be honest. Super detailed clouds in the background, with pixel art boxes and a ball bearing(not sure) that looks like a JPG just didn't look like one cohesive vision, you know? 

Overall, I think you did a good job with this game in a lot of ways, but it also has some room for improvement!

Really interesting game! Simple to understand, but still room to be challenging!

I am a sucker for text based adventures. Some of my absolute favorite types of games. The writing in this game is pretty good! It has some character, although there weren't any characters outside of our young hero I encountered that had much screen time to have their personality show, aside from Bungus (great name by the way). The UI is really clean, the art is great, and it feels like a well built text based adventure game. 

There were a few things to note, though. I am completely confused by the combat. It took me a bit to realize that I click and drag from the glyph to the type of spell, either bolt or storm, but the weird thing is that storm never seemed to do any damage no matter what glyph I had. I could see the animation specifically when I tried a storm with a wind glyph, but it never did any damage. I had to rely on bolt, which of course, wasn't reasonable, given that it only targets one thing, and you're often facing groups. I died...

Which leads me to glitch number one: I died, had negative health, and I... didn't die? I thought it was intentional at first. Like, a way for the player to progress through the story if they died. The reason I say that is because, whenever I would get into a fight, it would INSTANTLY end the encounter before I could see the battle screen for more than a few frames. But I restarted the game, to see if I could figure out the combat better, and I died, which forced me to restart the game like I'd initially expected. 

During this restart, I died again (I can't tell if the combat is too difficult or if I'm missing an aspect of it), and the glitch happened again, but it was a little different this time. After getting over a certain wall, encountering certain characters and having a certain chicken stolen, the game broke for me. It popped up a button to continue dialogue, I pressed it, the button disappeared, and the text disappeared from the dialogue box. I tried casting spells just to see, and my mana stopped regenerating. There was nothing I could do but quit the game, and at this point I ended my run. 

I think this game has a lot of potential. In fact, I really like it, and want to see what happens, it's got me hooked. But between the combat and the glitches, I wasn't able to see the adventure through to the end, and that makes me a bit sad. If this game could be fixed from its current state, I would genuinely really love to continue, because there is so much good stuff here, and there really aren't a whole lot of text based games being made nowadays. 

Please don't take this as me roasting your game. There was so much good stuff here, I truly mean that. 

Are plurals not allowed in Scrabble? Because "Yours" and "Years" are apparently not words. Same goes for "Yodel". 

That said, it's simple and fun, and that's a very good thing! Short play sessions and a simple premise make a great mobile game. I think it could do with some background music, and the ability to lower the volume of the SFX would be nice, but overall I think this is a great game! Good job! 

Simple, calm, chill. I like it! Great job!

This game reminds me of a specific old flash game, in a good way! It was simple to understand but kept ramping up the difficult to provide a challenge. I'm not great at these types of games, so my score wasn't fantastic, but it was still fun to get through! Tiny thing, wish there was some ambient music, but the SFX and everything were great, and not having music didn't take away from the game.

Yeah, I didn't make that super clear, wanted it to be more of a surprise although I didn't have as much time to do any form of foreshadowing as I would have liked. I'm glad you liked it, and thanks for playing!

Thanks! I think it probably would have been beneficial if I had made the teleporters go to set locations, and give you a better idea of where you are in relation to the slime hive mind, but I'm glad you enjoyed it nonetheless! And yeah, I wanted to integrate multiple "endings", even if they were simple, because I think it's always fun to have more than one way to solve a problem. 

That's a pretty interesting idea, I wouldn't have thought of that! 

Thanks for the input!

Well, I love Portal, so immediately you get points there. I like how the character is very definitely inspired by Binding of Isaac, it's cute! I think this was an interesting take on the puzzle structure of the Portal games, so points there too!

Couple things. I know it's been mentioned before, but the move speed is just way too high - There were a number of times throughout playing the game that I would unintentionally go through a portal and fall into the hole enough times to end the game immediately. There was also not enough feedback when I would take damage - a lot of the time, I didn't' even realize I'd gotten hurt or fallen into a hole because of how fast I would move and respawn. It also felt like it would register me falling into a hole even though I didn't THINK I touched it sometimes. This could be related to the speed, I'm not sure. To be honest, the speed is my primary gripe about the game - most of the time I died and had to restart, it wasn't because I messed up the puzzle, it was because I didn't feel like I was in control of the character's movement. 

Overall, I think this is an interesting game that has a good connection (heh) to the theme! A bit more tweaking of some of the hitboxes, speed, and things of that nature, on top of more levels, and this could be a really fun, fleshed out game! Nice work! 

Cute, unique, and interesting! Great job! Was really confused about the torches at first, wondered why they went out so quickly, because I thought the goal was to light all of them when I couldn't see the light to guide Skippy to. Turns out I was totally wrong, haha! 

Here's mine! https://itch.io/jam/lost-relic-games-1/rate/1571272

Thanks for the feedback! 

Yeah, the healing is definitely too slow. I was planning on making it so that the more slimes you gather, the more healing you get from the slime hive mind, but I didn't get around to it unfortunately. You didn't miss anything at all. Getting more slimes increased your max health and healed you for that amount, but it still wasn't enough to counteract the amount of damage you were likely to be taking. 

I'm glad you liked the music and art! 

I was a bit worried about camera shake being too much for how frequently a player is both dealing and taking damage. I could probably implement a critical hit system and have the screenshake happen when one of those pops. As for particles, there's not a built in particle system to my knowledge, but getting a simple one made isn't too big of a deal. I agree, it would make it look much cooler. As for hit stop, I don't know, there's not really a whole lot of animation involved in the attacks so there wouldn't be a great place to put it, unless I put in different kinds of attacks, which I'm not necessarily opposed to as an idea. 

Don't worry, I didn't take it that way! Constructive feedback is always good. I did want the game to be difficult, but I think if I implemented levels or something, with some smaller rats to deal with until Ratnir was the final boss, it would be better for getting a player into the flow of the game, and help them feel more prepared for the challenge.

No problem! I think it would specifically happen when I approached like one of the boxes or items in the room, a text box of some kind would appear on the bottom of the screen that I could only see the top portion of. It didn’t prevent me from playing through the game though!

Yeah, that's the problem with jams - the time limit doesn't feel that limiting until you're near the end, haha. I totally understand easing the player in - I think that worked out really well. 

I should have clarified that further, sorry. I didn't mean any of the actual gameplay mechanics for the buttons having problems, I meant specifically when you have to click the "continue to next level" or "Try again for a better time" buttons. The swing points worked perfectly fine from my experience! My monitor was something kind of weird for monitors - I think it's 200hz. 

The only level I got stuck on was the final level, and that's because I'm bad with  directions and such. I had a hard time figuring out how to get to the exit portal. I think that's less a fault of the game, and more on me. I didn't really have concerns about controls or pacing, everything made sense to me,  personally. It felt like things were introduced and explored for a few levels before new things were added, and it never felt like mechanics were being shoehorned in. It felt like it was becoming a more complete game, which was great! 

I will say, I did have one glitch that I couldn't replicate. It was on level 11, the first level with enemies. I don't know how it happened at all, but the grapple line got connected to a swing point pretty far away through a wall. It didn't pull me closer, and it would still let me shoot a grapple line elsewhere, so it was basically just a blue line connected to the player for no reason. Like I mentioned, I couldn't replicate it, I tried a couple of times, but I wasn't paying too much attention to exactly what was going on when it first occurred, to be honest. 

Yeah, at the start of the jam I was trying to keep everything meticulously organized, but by the end the whole thing was an illegible, disorganized mess, haha. But the people playing the game don't know that!

While this was my second game jam, it's the first one where I did any amount of programming. In my other one, I only made music for a couple of games, but I did everything myself this time, so I was able to learn a lot. 

For starters, getting people to play test the game before submission day is a good idea. I wasn't sure how to balance the difficulty of my game at all. I knew I was biased because I'm the one who made the game, but I didn't know exactly how much to offset the difficulty because of that. A number of people said my game was hard - and that was the entire point, I didn't want it to be easy - but I don't know just how hard is TOO hard, you know?

Second, I learned that there's nothing wrong with changing your idea. I had basically completed the game about halfway into the jam, but then I realized that I didn't have a connection to the theme at all. I brainstormed for a while and decided to drastically change the gameplay in order to be more fun, and have a connection to the theme. It was stressful, and I didn't get time to polish much as a result (I had to redo most of the code from square one) but it was worth it. I feel more proud of what I put on display than what I had initially made. 

I also learned that there's no room for perfectionism sometimes. I tend to get bogged down by this a lot - I often don't even start projects when I have an idea because I am so deeply caught up in every single detail when I'm conceptualizing, but with this jam, I learned that sometimes, it's more about getting something on paper and figuring out the details later. You don't have to polish every piece of the system before putting it to work.

Finally, I learned that I am my own worst critic. This is something I already knew, and it's always proven true, but this served as a nice reminder. I was convinced that my game was utter garbage, and not worth playing. Totally thought mine would be the worst game submitted by a mile. But apparently, people actually enjoyed my game, and I'm really proud of that! It makes me feel a lot more confident in my abilities moving forward. I know my submission has a number of problems and it's far from perfect, but for once, I feel like I can make something that people would enjoy playing, and that's a super motivating thing to feel. 

Nice job, this game is really interesting! I like the music and the vibe, and the mechanic here is both interesting and well connected to the theme! Great job!

Couple things. To start with, there were a few glitches. In one of the levels, you could walk off the edge to the memory thingy with the non-inner self John. If you did so, he would be frozen, but he would be able to go into his walking animations, and if you held jump, he'd just... flip out, haha. If you are close enough to the edge of a platform, you can turn that character into the falling sprite without actually falling. Nothing gamebreaking, but just thought it should be mentioned. 

One thing that kept happening was with the seeds of doubt/spikey plants of doom. They seem almost TOO sensitive. There's no buffer around it - it often felt like I would literally touch it with one pixel, just one, and have the whole level reset because of it. It got annoying when I couldn't even tell that I touched it. Nothing too major, but it was definitely something that took away from the experience for me. 

Overall, this is some good work! Good job!

This is a really neat little game! I like that there was a focus on the atmosphere here - not necessarily trying to make it scary or anything, but subtly unsettling. Unnerving, but still calm. Gave a unique feeling that I enjoyed a lot. The music helped with that a lot - it was perfect for the game. Chilled out, not desperate or energetic, but it still had momentum. Great job with that!

I also thought the gameplay was interesting! Simple and straightforward, but there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. It did a great job of not introducing too many different things, keeping the core gameplay as the focus. I like that it made you think and be patient without being too challenging. Super simple concept that was very well done here! And the detail that the shadow is far more sensitive to light than the body is to dark was interesting too, I liked that. 

Couple of things to note, however. To start with, (and this is almost certainly because I use an ultrawide monitor) the little blurbs (I think they were blurbs, I don't know) that would show up on the bottom of the screen sometimes were completely cut off for me. I could only see the top of the box, and not really a whole lot else. I don't know if they were telling me controls, or story, or what. Like I mentioned, it's likely because I'm using an ultrawide monitor, it's caused problems for a number of other games as well. 

I don't really have anything else critical to say. Overall, I really liked this game a lot, excellent job!

This game is awesome! The art is simple, but distinct, and effective. The music is very fitting of the scene, and it's not too dramatic or anything so it doesn't distract me from the game. I really like the mechanics too. As a player, it makes me feel really cool being able to slow time, grab enemy bullets out of mid-air and use them to destroy the enemy who shot it at me in the first place. Really well done! 

A couple of things to note. It's probably because I have an ultrawide monitor, that has a tendency to cause problems with game jam games, but for me, I had to click the bottom portion of each button in order for them to function properly. If I clicked the top half of a button, it would just not register anything. Like I mentioned, probably because I have an ultrawide, but just thought I should mention it. The only other thing I have to say is that the final level of the game feels like a weird place to introduce a new mechanic - that being the bullet-grabbing one. The level before it does have enemies that shoot you, but it's not mentioned that you can do that. Especially because of the fact that the mechanic added a whole new layer of depth, I found myself wishing for more levels where I could utilize it. 

Overall, this is an extremely fun game with some great mechanics and great ideas. Absolutely loved it! 

A good old fashioned tower defense game with a couple of interesting twists! I really like the mechanic of needing to prioritize which cannon to use at a given time, which is both because of distance to the battery as well as the element that's most prevalent in the oncoming wave. Really cool!

To be honest though, I think this game may be too difficult. I don't mean to sound ridiculous or anything, but you really don't get a lot of money in the first couple of waves at all. When wave 3 comes around and the fire elementals are there, if you don't have water guns, there is no way you're going to get through their health. From there, it continues to spiral, where the other elements are more expensive despite not necessarily doing more damage outside of the elemental weakness they're associated with. It's hard to earn money, and you can't prioritize which cannon fires at what, you have to hope it will aim at the right element. This feels less like a situation where a strategy is needed to overcome a challenge, and more like unfair design. 

I think something that could help remedy this is if there was a way to have multiple cannons hooked up to the battery, but at a cost. For example, if each cannon attached to the battery reduced the battery's maximum "capacity" (or health, as it were) by 10 or something, not only would this mean you'd only have so much firepower to work with, you'd also need to decide how much extra damage is worth reducing the battery's health for. Obviously you don't have to take that advice or anything, just an idea. 

Either way, I think this was a really interesting game with some great ideas, great visuals, and I enjoyed it overall!

Hoo boy, I had a hard time getting through this one. For most games, that's an insult, but I mean it as a compliment in this case, haha. It's really straightforward and simple, but it immediately got me immersed and in the zone. I did NOT want to explore because I was really creeped out. 

I couldn't figure out how to outrun the robot. Once it noticed me, it was always moving faster than I was, and as a result, there was nothing I could do except try in vain to run away. I don't know if there's a way to sprint, I tried Shift at least, but it didn't work. 

Excellent work!

Ooo, that’s an awesome idea - having the actual line interact with the boss - I’ll definitely need to consider that if I develop the game any further! 

I’m glad you enjoyed it, thanks for the feedback! 

This game is fantastic! great visuals, great music, fun and unique mechanics. A very polished experience, really impressive for the time limit! 

The game is simple, and I think it's kind of cute. The balls with the hats reminds me a little of Golf It, if you're familiar with that. 

A couple of things. As someone pointed out, when you fall off the map, it doesn't restart, which isn't a big deal. However, I found a glitch - when you get to the big part of the main platform, if you are on the side closest to the spawn, and are touching the conveyor belt on the far right and press jump at the same time, the game just... restarts. Additionally, I found the final ball first, and he congratulated me on finding all of them, which isn't a big deal, but may want to be careful with hard coding dialogue like that in the future. 

Overall, good job, was a fun game to play!

This is really cool, great job! It takes some practice, but once you figure it out, it's a really cool mechanic that is implemented really well! I liked the music too. The only thing I would really say is that when you're in the formation where you press space to shoot (pink on top, I believe) you don't technically need to swap positions at all to stay alive. It feels a little weird, but aside from that, this is excellent! My high score (not doing what I mentioned before) was 125!

This game is so cool! Great job! The art and music are excellent, the game is simple to understand and fun, it's fantastic! I can totally see this being a mobile game, especially if there were added modes and stuff, like free play. 

Excellent work!

Really enjoyed this one! The art is cute and looks good, I liked having to make sure I didn't accidentally pick a look-alike that was on the bulletin board. I also enjoyed the music! The time limit was long enough that I never started to feel worried about running out of time until the very end, where I.... actually did run out of time, but I don't mind, because I know I took too long trying to figure it out. This also goes really well with the theme. 

If there was a little bit more in terms of mechanics, like having to do some sort of investigation yourself, I can see this being a really fun full release. 
Great job!

Very good looking game with great atmosphere. The music really helped tie the whole picture together, as well. 

I think the message of the game is very interesting. Not quite Eldritch horror, but an exploration of nihilism as a philosophy, almost.

Great job! Not totally certain on the connection to the theme, though. 

I think the art is really cute, good job on that! I also like the music, it fits well. 

There's a glitch where, when you get to the letter, if you press on the game, the dialogue box asking if you want to play will appear, and if you press yes, it just closes. If you press again, Hitori says they already played today. Not a big deal, just thought you should know. 

Overall, great job!

I love the art of the game! It makes it clear who you are, and who the enemy is, while also making each unit look different and unique! I think it would be pretty cool if the tower changed colors based on who is controlling it, and it would make it easier to tell as well outside of the HUD! 

Couple of things. First, there are way too many enemies. I don't know how it's possible to win, you just can't push out anywhere near as many units as the enemy, but theirs are just as powerful. 1 of my spear guys will kill one of the enemy spear guys, but it will kill both the enemy and my spear guy. As a result, if I can't match the enemy output, there's no possible way to win. Second, every time I lose, the game crashes in WebGl, and I have to reload the page to restart. 

Good job, just needs some work!

This is a really cool game! The art and ambiance is excellent, does a great job of making you feel like a survivor rather than a hero. The sound design is fantastic as well, very unsettling. Great job of getting the theme across as well! 

This game is awesome, I love it. It does such a good job of integrating the theme and the character into one mechanic that doesn't feel forced or anything. The puzzles are fun and interesting. If this were a full release with more puzzles to do, I would absolutely love to play it.