itch.io

#DailyDoku 2024.8.20 - ★★★★★ - 31.9667s - steps: 42

This thing looks so incredible. Those big chunky sprites are so crisp! And the colors are perfect - idk how you landed on this palette, but I feel like I'm 4 in 1999 again. It's playful and nostalgic and sleek and retro-futurist. I love it.

This looks like a single-screen game mock-up you would see from a pixel artist on Twitter and think, "there is no way a game in motion would actually look like this." And you totally pulled it off.

Game is fun too, but I am bad lol.

This is my favorite Fletch game - and I own a physical copy of SPEEDCAT! The rules are very straightforward, but there is a ton of complexity. I really love that the flight paths are locked in once you create them. I am constantly stressed playing games like Mini Metro because it feels like you are constantly encouraged to re-optimize the roads. I like that you are only ever adding new pieces to the puzzle, never rebuilding the whole puzzle from scratch.

Would you be willing to add swipe controls? The game would be much easier to control on Android if I could swipe up/down/left/right anywhere onscreen to move instead of having to press the digital buttons!

#DailyDoku 2024.8.6 - ★★★★★ - 29.6667s - steps: 30

What a wonderful little puzzle game. Nice work!!

What detailed analysis! Thank you!

As far as I am concerned, those blue crabs are lobsters at heart!

This rules! How is it even possible you made something this gorgeous-looking in 2 hours?!? Incredible.

🦀🦀🦀
ビデオは素晴らしいですよ。プレイしていただきありがとうございます！

This is cool! A very solid lost-vikings-style puzzle game with alternate dimensions, The red/blue color schemes are a great way to keep track of the two different characters.

I was impressed with the way you gradually rolled out new mechanics. It was not immediately obvious how some of the new moving parts worked, but the most obvious tests were a surefire way expose the underlying behavior - which I'm sure was not easy to design!

The story was interesting, but I wish there was a way to jump immediately into the action. I was excited to play this because it was a jam entry, but I might be turned off by a webgame frontloaded with a few minutes of reading if I encountered it in the wild.

This is a riot! It's so funny that you spent so much time and energy making juicy visual and audio feedback for crashes, in a game where you are expected to handle customer cars with "exceptional care." I'm not sure if the game is loaded with slapstick comedy by design, but I had a big stupid grin on my face for most of my playtime.

The feature support here is also insane - this is playable with 6 people?! On multiple levels, with adjustable difficulty? It is ridiculous that your team basically created an entire commercial product from scratch in a single week.

As far as raw ideas go, this might be the best jam entry I have seen! What an incredible take on the theme!

I love that you throw the player right into the action, and the game is immediately accessible and engaging. I would love to play a full length game with this idea, adding different movements types and button layouts on subsequent stages. There is so much potential here, and what you have already is just so fun.

It made me chuckle that the player's eyes follow the mouse, even though there is no mouse control in the game.

I can't imagine how long it must have taken to create a fully-voiced cutscne with so many different shots and unique assets! What an intro!

I am very impressed that you wrote logic for a CPU-controlled second player. It fell right in line with the jam theme, and made the race feel much more urgent when you could see your rival racking up points to your immediate right.

It was interesting that you could use the rocks to slow your descent. I felt like I was constantly weighing the benefit of moving downward faster vs. slowing myself so it was easier to grab gems. 

This was wonderful!

I loved how the whole game was built around overlapping physical pieces. It would have been easy to render simple text boxes over puzzle screens, but tying the story to brochures, letters, etc. alongside the star map really connected me to the story. And it was so rewarding to see a zoomed-out view of the entire table once the map was completely reconstructed.

The constellation reconstruction puzzles were really cool and unique! I wish the criteria for "solving" a section was a little more strict - I accidentally locked in a few matches while I was rearranging the negatives in the play area as I prepared to work on a different part of the map. But the process of actually filling in the gaps was very satisfying when I did finally identify the overlapping stars.

I also managed to soft lock myself on the first puzzle by placing a photo directly on the top of the journal. I could not move it again because of the dialogue, and needed to reload the page to liberate my puzzle piece!

The music was appropriately soothing, and the art was incredible. I am not an artist, but the "fuzzy lines" and color choices made the game feel very thoughful and welcoming. It is so impressive that your team was able to work together on such a cohesive package in such a short amount of time. Well done!

Nice job! Very impressive game for an 11-year-old - I can't wait to see your future projects!

This was pretty challenging, it reminded me a little bit of the fishing mini game in Stardew valley. It would be nice if there was a quick animation or sound to show the truck was about to drop an obstacle. It seems like it is nearly impossible to avoid the rotten lettuce and spikes if you are directly alongside the truck when they spawn. But I guess that is also a strategic decision - is it worth it to keep pace with the red snail, or is it better to lose out on a few points to stay out of the danger zone?

This is great! What a fun little detective tale. There is so much detail to the world, and I was impressed that you were able to write so much branching dialogue in such a short timeframe. There were quite a few conversations that made me laugh as well, the game has an earnest sense of humor that I really loved. My biggest complaint is that it is unclear which areas are "out of bounds." I was stuck for a while because the path north to the well used the same tiles/textures as other impassable areas.

Edit: And the credits song is such a surprise! I loved it!!

What a wonderful little diorama!

Your models all look fantastic, and your protagonist's room feel like an authentic, lived-in space. It was also very cool that you allow the player to rotate, zoom, and pan around. Even though the gameplay would work just as well in two dimensions, you went the extra mile to really bring it to life.

Your hand-drawn portrait looks great as well, and the dialogue is nicely animated and easy to click-through.

There is some really strong visual imagery in the writing, but there were a few places where it was a little overwhelming. Those first few paragraphs are so dense: a yawn pulls your mouth, your brain itches, your brain is jostled by a sharp beep, you are pulled to your feet by numbness, etc. You have found lots of cool ways to describe waking up, but my own brain could have benefited from some straighforward descriptions for balance.

The music was good - it would be cool to hear a version of this song that uses some more acousic-sounding instruments, only because midi gets a little grating over time, and the melody itself was lovely.

You did a great job of demonstrating your character's relationship with ADHD through their descriptions of the world. I am not so familiar with ADHD, but your post-game message helped reframe the way Ila  organizes her thoughts. Well done!

I hope my feedback does not read as overly critical! I am so impressed with this final product, and I only have so many thoughts because it was such an engaging experience overall!  I am very excited to see future Acorn Jelly games, and I am excited to play Celestially Yours in the near future too!

I really like this idea! I think this could be a fun and challenging co-op game with just a few minor tweaks to balance. If you are going to reward the player with more time for completing a task, the task has to be finite or the rewarded time has to get progressively smaller. In this case, if you receive 10 seconds for collecting the first item, maybe the next item gives 9.8 seconds, and then 9.6, etc. That way it's impossible to play infinitely. You could also make the number of points based on the time remaining, to guarantee that the fastest players have the highest scores.

The art was very cute, and the idea was very sweet. I love the idea of cooperative shopping. The balance issues are totally reasonable for a jam game, and you have a lot to be proud of in this submission!

I CAN'T STOP SHOPPING

I think the bonus time for collecting items might be a little too high! As I continued to play, my time-remaining continued to rise. I eventually gave up after 6300 points with 3:39 left on the clock!

This is great! Totally self-explanatory, with a fun premise, and really well-designed levels! You got a ton of mileage out of pretty simple building blocks, I am very impressed! I was constantly delighted and surprised by the puzzle solutions, it was so challenging to focus on both sides at once - which means you nailed the theme!

This was a blast. Definitely some unintended comedy here as my player rams into the same walls over and over while I try to master the controls. I loved the movement controls once I understood them, but I wish it was more explicit that you need to hold left/right BEFORE trying to move forward and back to turn. For the first few stages, I assumed that I needed to press both simultaneously, and I only actually achieved my intended move about half the time.

The added twist of hitching the other vehicles was so cool. It was a great reveal, and added a ton of fun interactions without ramping up the difficulty too much or breaking my brain. I don't play a ton of sokobahn movement puzzles, but I loved the way this felt open-ended. Each level felt like a little playground where I had room to maneuver and plan my approach in realtime, without feeling like I was constantly at risk of soft-locking myself out of the solution.

Sometimes you just want to WSAD around and shoot some sh*t, and this came through in SPADES to scratch that itch. Movement is smooth, and the enemy attacks are all pretty-well telegraphed. The alternating collapsing walls are such a sweet idea to keep the player moving!

The game was occasionally a little disorienting, for two reasons: I wish there was an actual crosshair asset, since my mouse cursor kept getting lost in the visual noise. And I wish there was an extra moment after dying to reset - I would often die and then get immediately get crushed by a collapsing wall before I could even get my bearings.

The art overall is fantastic. I love the classic geometric shapes for player, bullets and enemies, paired with trippy background visuals and lots of particle/filter effects. The soundtrack was groovy too!

This is such a vibe. It's such a polished, psychodelic, chill experience. The controls are SUPER tight and fine-tuned, and all of the motion is well-animated. The actual gameplay is totally unique, I have never seen this take a pong-style game before. And what a beautiful literalist inperptetation of the theme, too. Well done, guys. This is an easy 5-stars for me in every category.

I love the visual style here! I cracked a huge smile when the thermometer-hat-wearing aliens buzz at you when you burger patty is cooked in the frog's mouth. What a crazy sentence - this thing is OOZING creativity. I love it so much.

As far as gameplay goes, this is a pretty competant overcooked -like. The controls are super responsive, and I loved that the entire game takes place in a single space. It was cool to finish the tutorial and realize that the screen scrolls, and I could walk directly to the kitchen from my current location.

My main complaint was that I needed to constantly open the controls menu to review the recipes - seeing the recipes on the ticket would go a long way towards making this more immediately fun.

This is a very impressive entry! I would happily pay full price that looks and sounds as good as this does!

The gameplay itself was a little bit frustrating. Platforming challenges in first person are tough, but the bottomless pit makes them very unforgiving. When stage 3 began, a pulsating black cube appeared in my field of view in seconds, and I was dead before I could recognize that it was an enemy or shoot it. I would have happily tried again, but I found myself back on stage 1.

I really did appreciate the world-building on display here though. The multiverse training mission is a cute take on the theme, and I loved the little touches like the recruitment poster in the lobby and the instructional voiceover.

This is so stressful haha.

The shift from idyllic music to heavy metal when you move from the living area into the work dungeon is so intense! This was very challenging, and it feels like the UI and sound design contribute to the challenge and intensity on purpose.

I'm not sure if this is a fun game, but the experience overall made me laugh, and there are lots of really fun touches here. I like the farm animals that you can push around outdoors, and I appreciate that there are details on the map outside the required gameplay elements.

I am bad at platformers, so this was very hard!! I'm sure there are lots of collision/movement states under the hood here, and the end result is very clean! There is no jank, and the gravity shifts are consistent and reliable. Nice implementation of a cool concept!

Wow, this is really, really fun! I wish there was a score incentive to select a faster speed. Great implementation of snake, great take on the jam theme, and clean visual design.

This is so fantastic! The core mechanic is cool and well-implemented, and I am totally blown away by the level design. I'm so impressed that you were able to fine-tune such large, challenging levels in just a week. This is really fun, great job. One of my favorites so far from a pure gameplay perspective!

The music sounded a little cheap, but it was really neat that you had two separate tracks that mixed louder and quieter depending on which side you were on. I loved the homemade sound effects! Similarly, the art is unimpressive, but it is a very charming cohesive style.

Really awesome job. I wish the world had more games like this!

🦀🐚🌊❤️

Would you believe that the final version of those blue b*stards is after TWO nerfs?!
Thanks for playing!!

Thanks for the detailed feedback, my man! You are not the first person to suggest 2 crabs in a single stage - I wanted to make it work, but I ran out of time! I wrote my A* pathfinding map to conditionally target the player or the water based on the has_grabbed state of the single enemy crab - and then realized that a second crab could not reuse the same map :( Maybe I'll try to cram that into the post-jam patch!

Thanks Noh! What major bugs do you encounter? I am aware that the player can walk downwards offscreen, and I am aware that both crabs occasionally get stuck in a recently-placed block and teleport out. I will probably release a patch after jam week!

lmao this rules! Even though this is mostly a dumb joke, it's so much funnier because of how much care and attention to detail went into the art.

Wow, this is brutally hard! I'm not 100% sure if you actually need to move left and right, my most successful runs were those where I stood still, only jumping when red balls approached. With a little tuning of the difficulty, I feel like this could be a fun addictive rhythmic high-score chaser, like Flappy Bird.

I wish there was a little more art, I tend to gravitate towards themed games over purely abstract titles like this. But if you are going for the shapes and colors approach, maybe some extra visual effects would make this really pop.

Nice work! And I wish I had better reflexes, because my few successful attempts were very satisfying!

This is lovely! It reminded me a little bit of a warioware mini game - just a quick little puzzle to solve with a ticking clock. And this is a pretty unique take on the theme, too!

When I went back to play again, I failed the right-hand plant and was treated to the "Demented Jim Jim" ending, which made me chuckle.

This is cool! I wish the gameplay in the dream world was substantially different from the waking world, but it is still a neat visual effect that I think I have not seen before. The levels felt a little too narrow to effetively navigate around the "chasing" enemy ghosts, but that might also be a skill issue!

This is an interesting concept! I would love to see a mobile version of this with procedural mazes. The process of solving each stage was satisfying and methodical. I think you could probably beat the game without the sneak preview of the maze just by bumping into the walls to build a mental map - maybe there should be a timer during the "dark" phase to encourage the player to actually take advantage of that initial 10 seconds.

Nice work, and congratulations on the release!

How do you play this game? Keyboard  Mouse input appear to do nothing :(