itch.io

Ah shoot, my apologies. Got a bit of a hair trigger on this stuff and it made an ass of me. Sorry for dumping all that in your comments.  

Beginner level stuff is hard, and I hope it isn't too discouraging to get comments like mine. Hope Dizzy keeps making his stuff no matter what anybody says :)

No, I didn't ask an AI. I don't use it to make decisions. I find it more interesting to make my own.

It's the fact that while there's a lot of game present, there are a lot of choices that don't make a whole lot of sense. The arrows go off in unpredictable directions, there are a bunch of buttons that don't seem to do anything, the background skins don't appear to work, a prestige feature tacked on that just kind of conflicts with the genre... lots of little stuff like that. It looks like whoever or whatever designed this didn't put a lot of thought into how the features work or how they interact with each other.

I suppose Dizzy could have done all of this himself but it would be a lot of very tedious work - hours upon hours - for results that don't look all that great in the end. That's not something I would want to do. It would make more sense to end up with this result if he'd put "make me a psychological horror arrow escape game" into GPT or whichever model the kids are using. 

I understand the desire here - Dizzy wants to put his name on something and say he made it. It feels good to do that! Dizzy isn't wrong for wanting that.

He wants to say he makes lots of games. I get that too! I want to do the same thing - game development is my dream job. But making lots of games isn't the same as making games someone actually wants to play and enjoys playing. I want to make games that make an impact on someone, that they'll enjoy and think hard about and remember for a long time, like the games that I grew up playing. And sadly there are no shortcuts to doing that - no model on the market can make a game that makes me feel a specific sense of wonder I felt when I was a child, or leave me feeling genuinely unsettled by the implications of a good horror twist. I have to figure out how to do that myself.

Learning the craft of game development - by which I mean actually learning how to make your own assets and code, level design, narrative, etc, without leaning on generative AI models to make artistic choices - is a lot of work. I understand why Dizzy might want to skip all of that. He doesn't want to make something that looks bad. But making stuff that looks like butt is a part of the learning process. You have to be willing to make mistakes to learn how to do better in the future. And you have to be willing to take risks to make something new and interesting.

Anyway, none of this is to say Dizzy is a bad guy. He's human (I assume) and humans make weird choices sometimes. It's what makes us interesting! But I think Dizzy would have a more fulfilling game development experience if he did things the honest way. He'd learn a lot of new skills, maybe make some friends who also want to make lots of games, and he could feel proud of the work that he did. And he'd have a body of work that expressed his ideas in a way that only he can.

Tell Dizzy I hope he has a good day :)

You might want to consider adding an AI disclosure on this

playing the full version. just bought him the budgie shirt. this here is man after my own heart lmao, fantastic work so far!

Hey I wanted to let you know, the Linux downloads appear to still be on V0.2.0 (per the number on the title screen). Would love to get past the first boss but he's too difficult for me rn lol, I don't have the difficulty settings.

How do I turn it off :(

Cute little game, I like!

Found a bug with the water buckets -- I have 18 of them currently and when I have more than 10 filled and use one, it always uses enough to knock it back down to 10 filled but only gives credit for using 1.

Whoa, this is really cool! 

Played until I beat the first boss, really enjoying what you have so far. 

Really liked the enclosure upgrade, made me feel a lot more powerful immediately. And the skill tree itself is one of the coolest executions I've ever seen!

Some of the visual effects make me feel a bit motion sick - would love to see an option to turn the distortions of the game field down. And the yellow/black moving stripes, while very cool looking, are distracting enough to make it harder for me to read the text - I think turning down the motion or making the stripes thicker might help??

I really enjoy the feel of the mouse controls. But, they make it extremely difficult to place down a segment - I can't control which segment I'm placing, and the snake moves in response to me trying to move to the right one which results in enough frustration that I barely used the mechanic, which feels like a waste of such a cool idea. 

A simple fix might be to introduce a hotkey to briefly slow down time, giving the player a chance to do what they actually mean to.

Wishing you the best of luck with this project!

Got to the end. Stacked my box full of transparent macaronis, farfalle, and raviolis until the physics engine was stuttering at the start of each level. 

Probably add a seizure warning for after the last level, where the screen flashes green and blue rapidly.

Great game! Really enjoyed it, cute concept with a really fun execution.

I am like. Addicted to this. Just bought my first transient runes and it's like a whole new world opened up. Pacing is slow enough not to overwhelm, but fast enough to hint at more depth to come -- you nailed the sweet spot.

And the art is awesome too, your assets inspire me to push myself as an artist!

Well done again, this game is amazing!

Finally beat the boss! Really enjoying the update. Design of the new miniboss goes hard and I like his mechanic. 

This is the quality of game I aspire to make, well-done. :)

Whoaaa this was good. I got chills at the reveal of the fate of you-know-who. Poor guy. Fabulously written horror

Sad I missed this one in the initial voting period. 

Very good incremental! Interesting concept, I like that there's a tangible endpoint, and the bats flying around the screen were a very charming touch that fit the theme of trick-or-treat style Halloween mischief perfectly. 

The only things I really miss are:

-- The ability to zoom out on the skill tree - at higher upgrade levels it felt tedious to navigate.

-- I also would have liked to see commas or some other division in the numbers, as when I got up to 5 and 6 digit prices I started to have trouble telling them apart.

Missed the ending as I'm not on Windows sadly, but very happy with this game overall. Very well done!

This game is fantastic and the rate you're updating is insane! Thanks for putting something this good out for free.

My husband and I have been playing together on our separate screens and saying shit like "I yearn for the mines" lol

One issue I have run into is I play in browser (Linux user lol) and I keep pretty much all the effects turned off at all times, but the particles keep turning back on every time I prestige.

Best of luck and take care of yourself!

Thank you, and thanks for playing! Glad you enjoyed :)

This was really cool! I liked how the more candy you had, the heavier the bucket got -- leaves a lot of room for interesting level design and I'd love to see you do more with that. Pretty simple and intuitive, with a nice use of the visual theme. One of my faves from this jam!

Once I got the hang of the controls I liked it! Shooting at enemies I couldn't fully see in the dark hallway was pretty cool. 

In the room with the shotgun I think you forgot to add a killbox under the level -- I fell into the pit and got softlocked.

And it's probably a good idea to list the controls on the page, or some kind of tutorial popup -- had to restart to figure out how to pick up a gun for the first time.

All in all, pretty good for your first game jam, well done!

I like your concept and the aesthetic! Very cool use of the TV.

I hope you get around to adding more, this is an awesome start!

Thanks for playing, we're glad you enjoyed :)

Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback! It is sort of deck-builder shaped now that you mention it haha.

The timer seems to be a common sticking point, so we'll be sure to take that into consideration for our future builds :)

Thanks for playing! 

Though I'm wondering if this comment was left on the right game? This one doesn't have player movement or obstacles -- it's a resource management game. 

Either way, will do, and best of luck to you as well :)

I loved this one! Cool aesthetic, neat mechanic, interesting framing and story, and it came together into something that looked very polished.

My only point of feedback is I softlocked myself twice on the first level  and refreshed the whole page before I figured out the reset button -- I would definitely teach people that in the tutorial level.

Well made, I think this is one of my favorites I've seen :)

This one is really cute! I like the floaty mechanic, makes for a unique take on a platformer. 

I have to echo something another comment said, there are a lot of non-colliding background elements which look exactly like platforms which was a bit frustrating. Consistency in which assets are solid and which assets are not is really important for a satisfying player experience. 

I did like it overall though, and it's very well-made for your first project!

I used Aseprite for everything on this one!

Ah, yeah, I drew it all at the same scale but am sadly desperately unfamiliar with Unity so I didn't touch it once it went into the engine on this one haha. Something to keep in mind on the next one though, thanks for the helpful feedback!

Whoa. Once I figured out the controls I felt compelled to keep going. What an awesome puzzle game!

I really like the style you went with -- simple, readable, and creepy but cute. My main gripe is that there's so much on the screen in certain levels that it can get a bit hard to read regardless of the style's simplicity. And the grappling hook skeletons I had to figure out mechanically, they were a tiny bit hard to tell apart. Some variation in enemy silhouette could help greatly with both of those problems.

Greatly enjoyed the atmosphere, thought the story was very fun and well-written, and I loved the dark twist at the end. One of the most brilliant games in this jam for sure, well done!

Thank you! This is the biggest project I've done art for so I was scrambling a bit to land on an art style, and some stuff went by the wayside trying to finish in time. Definitely a learning experience for me lol. Thanks for playing!

Would have liked a note saying what the controls are, and you should definitely turn up the brightness. Pretty good though!

I'm never getting my phone back, am I?

Short, sweet, and enjoyable. Well made!

Liked the art direction for this one, equally bright and grimy. Movement feels chaotic - I careened around the map and managed to make a few deliveries before landing on my side in a trash heap and getting stuck. I had fun with it, well made!

Feels pretty nice! Combat matches well with the frenetic energy of the song. I liked the environment, simple but surreal, and I love the design of the demon guys! Well made!

Oh hey, before I partnered up I was thinking of making a game a lot like this one for this song! A point and click horror game set in a dingy basement room, and was kicking around ideas about self-mutilation. Was even gonna have a hydroponic with some dying plants in it. Didn't really know where I was going with it and scrapped it, so I'm really glad to see someone finished a similar idea. I really like where you took it!

I like how you used the face as the player character, a little silly in a good way. Loved all the tongue-in-cheek humor in the flavor text, and how it hinted a little at the puzzle solutions. Vibes were perfect and the aesthetic was on point. Well made!

Very nice animations! Though I feel like your game had the same issue our entry had, where I was trying to pay attention to the Snake part so I missed a lot of the fun stuff that was happening up top. The shoelace as a snake was a fun choice, and leans naturally into "tripping on your shoelaces" as a failure state, which I love for a racing game.

I liked the way you used the band's logo as a power up, wish we'd thought of that haha. The timed power ups felt like a good choice - put some pressure on to make decisions faster. And I liked that crashing into walls didn't have negative consequences, made it feel more forgiving. I got first place on my first try!

Liked this one a lot, well made!

Whoa, what a cool idea! I held on for 14 days. I liked the choice mechanic, where you don't know what's coming next so you just have to sort of shore everything up where it feels vulnerable. 

Will note that running this one made my computer get very hot haha.

Overall I really liked it though, a very cool take on this song!

Ohh I like the crunchiness of the graphics on this one! Pretty fun hack and slash, and enjoyed the feel of the struggle mechanic with the hands. Got to a point where I could barely seen my char on the screen, and shortly thereafter I died. I suspect the enemies just keep coming?

Either way,  really liked this one. Really good feel to it!

What you have so far is pretty cute! I like the art style :)

This one was pretty good! Once I figured out the controls it was pretty easy.  From my playthrough I did figure out the rock-paper-scissors mechanic, and that does introduce a little strategy into which order to go in some of the levels, which is nice. If you wanted to develop this idea further I could see this working well as a fully-fledged puzzle mechanic, where you can't progress unless do things in the right order to get enough coins, or something like that.

Interesting concept and I thought you executed it well! 

Was blown away by the execution of this one. A really cool idea, and a very good visual representation of the distortion of memory. Left me feeling nostalgic and bittersweet, and it wasn't just from the song. 

Giggled at the "water balloon," the kid logic of the memories was on point haha. Was there a place I could've used the glass shards or the boxes? Settings said I found 28 of 27 interactions and I don't think I used them.

The out of bounds error showed up for me on my laptop (using Linux), but not on my desktop (Windows). Played the browser version on Firefox on both. Sounds like a weird bug from your other comment, here's hoping you figure out what's causing it :)

Really cool game overall! Well made.

Went back, and WOW I'm not sure how I missed that haha. Still brutally difficult, I've gotten to the second treadmill room now - those freaking ghosts keep getting me. At this point I'm determined to beat it to prove I can, so I can confirm you've got that as a fun factor haha