itch.io

I'd love to release something on console one day, but for now I'm just testing the Windows version using an Xbox controller. A console release will have to be a dream for now! 

And I've never played Balatro! Better give it a try so I know what you're taking about :D 

Thank you, and so glad to hear it has inspired your gamedev journey!

The plan is to release a post-jam version for free with some minor updates.  Then I'll see where it goes from there!

Thank you for playing! 

It's made in GameMaker, and you're right it's a 3D environment with 2D sprites that always face towards the camera, similar to DOOM :) 

Ooh that could be a bug then! Oops!

Only if you've already hit them, it's an assist, and to stop the other enemies from stealing your kills

Thank you for playing!

The other NPCs are also fighting for their lives and trying to ascend into the arena!  It's a free for all fight for survival. 

I also wanted to add throwable spears but that didn't make it into the game jam version. 

Really glad you liked the music and art style :)

Incredible amount of polish for a game jam game and it's impressive how many features you were able to add.  Love the player animations and the juicy effects when punching through rocks.  Really good stuff!

Really well made.  I love the sprites and the map screen.  It's a neat idea to have the mini games spread across different battles and they were really fun, I just wanted more of them! 

Fun and addictive!

The sound design is excellent and I like how you added a button for ringing the bell.  I'd love to be able to pull a wheelie for extra points :D

Incredible game!  Really well made and the overall presentation is perfect.  Puzzles are clever and the tile swapping mechanic is easy to pick up and well implemented.  Music is great too and I loved how the music adapts to different areas. 

Bonus points for being able to 'swop' the other characters too, that made me laugh.  

I remember Mouse Required from last year too was one of my favourites!  Great job on delivering another awesome lowrezjam entry! 

Very polished and well made.  The note hits felt accurate and it was easy to keep up just by listening to the music and hitting the keys to the beat.  The camera zooming in and out and moving around was a nice touch, and then when the notes start flying in on a curve it really helped to keep things interesting.  All of the chiptune music tracks were excellent too!

I appreciate you adding a hard mode for rhythm game veterans.  Now all you need some sort of BitDJ DDR controller peripheral :D

The artwork and sprites in this are fantastic, great job!  I particularly liked the animation for running back to the bike after you fall off, that was a really nice touch rather than just respawning. 

The sense of speed is great too, the addition of speedlines and obstacles wizzing past works really well and isn't too distracting at such a low resolution.  It all feels great to play, especially punching and kicking the other riders and launching them into a tree! :D

This is a lot of fun and the grapple/swinging physics are really well implemented.  It's so satisfying when you're launching yourself through the level and swinging through tiny gaps and avoiding spikes with precision.  Easy to pick up and play but tough to master!  

Great entry! 

The procedural animation is really impressive!  I'd love to learn how to do something like this.  Appreciate you adding a  devlog showing some of the behind the scenes stuff. 

I really liked the sense of power you get as you grow bigger and get new abilities, then being able to burn things and destroy the villagers was really fun.  

Some of the effects seemed way too high-res for a lowrezjam entry but otherwise the visuals and audio are really good. 

Love the animation of the player and spraying the dirt with the little hose was very satisfying. 

I found the visuals a bit too busy so it was hard to see what I was interacting with some of the time, but I like the idea of not being able to see the levels properly before you've cleaned them.  I just think the dirt and grime could use less colours to make things a bit more readable. 

But overall this was a fun experience and very well made :) 

Incredible visuals and sound design, and the music was really good too! 

The impact of crashing, the speed lines and drifting felt great - everything is really polished.  This works really well for a lowrezjam game.  Nice and simple gameplay but really fun and addictive. 

This is really well made and a really cool game for your interpretation of the cleanup crew theme!  

Impressive visuals that work really well for a low res game.  I also like how the music blends to a different audio effect while not in gameplay and the menu transitions and overall juice were really polished.  

And very inspiring that this was all made in GameMaker too!  Great job!

It's pretty cool you were able to fit this on a floppy disk!

Gameplay is fun and I liked the variable jump height and how the raccoon can float slightly.  Pretty unforgiving once the second wave of snakes start rolling in,  or maybe I just need more practice! 

Pretty incredible!  I love the art style and the limited colour palette, the boss fights are really well designed and tough as hell!  I finally beat the cat and then the snake boss absolutely demolished me!! 

Really nice idea and very polished for a game jam game :)

This was very touching and impressive how quickly you managed to get the player emotionally invested in the story.  I was sat on the end screen just listening to the music reflecting on life and death...  It's a really good interpretation your chosen the theme and works well both as a low res game and a short experience.  

My only complaint is that the player seems to have a lower depth than the bed, but other than that it was really well made. 

Thank you! 

And hello fellow GameMaker dev!  :D

Completely agree the core gameplay loop could be a bit more exciting with some more variety but really appreciate you playing.

Your game looks incredible, I will definitely check it out! 

Thank you very much for the feedback and I'm really glad you enjoyed it! Good to know the web version worked well for you - maybe it's my browser that's the problem! 

Completely agree gamepad support would be great for a post-jam version, I ran out of time to properly implement it unfortunately. 

Hey! Wow, thank you very much as always for such generous feedback. It's much appreciated! And 90 kills, that's very impressive!

Completely agree some of those little touches such as visual/audio feedback could have used some more work. I found it tricky to make the pickups more obvious with such a low resolution for sure. There is a sound effect that plays when the spear tips break, but it's very similar to the sound effect for when you apply them, and gets lost amongst all the squelchy stab SFX so easily missed! I agree with all of your points though, especially about the hp/stamina bar. There were a few things I didn't feel were fully polished and that includes the perk system. Water originally had crocs to avoid and fish to hunt, which would have made the sprint in water perk a bit more important. 

I gave the player the advantage when it comes to spear range, so that might be why it seemed a bit inconsistent, and the billboard sprites definitely confuse the sense of depth! Also the red hue is supposed to be black for enemy kills but I must have messed up the code somewhere on the flash effect without realising! Oops!

All really useful feedback and lots I'd like to improve on for a post-jam version. 

And in answer to your questions: 

1. Enemies have two states (idle or chase) and a very primitive detection zone based on distance to toggle between the two states. They're randomly assigned either the player or another enemy as their target and then an alarm goes off every second or so to check who they were last hit by - the player, a dog or another enemy which allows them to change target. And then some enemies will spawn in the 'chase' state to make things a bit more random, and means they'll randomly fight each other without the player getting involved, which I thought was cool! In the same alarm they're also swapping between an attack or block state. They'll only block when their target is attacking and only attack if they're within a certain distance to their target. The range and priority of attack vs. block is also randomised so you get some enemies who are blocking masters and others who just go nuts trying to stab you.

I think it would be good to add some more states in future, such as fleeing when low on health, or dodging instead of just blocking half the time. 

2. There are invisible spawners all about the arena which will only spawn enemies if the purge isn't active, the spawner is behind the fog and the total enemy count is below a certain amount. So they're basically spawning out of sight, but it won't ever spawn too many. Then they'll stop spawning during the purge to give the impression that everyone is being killed off by the dogs! 

I hope that helps, and thanks very much for playing! 

Or you could keep it for ice themed levels?  Maybe even make it more slippery! :D 

Great game and very challenging!  I can see speedrunners absolutely demolishing this.  The hardest part is trying to figure out the speed and momentum of the character.  More often than not I'd fall down a pit just because I was still slowing down.  The instant restart is a good feature though! 

I liked the simple pixel art style and the lighting system is cool and adds a lot of polish to the game. 

Amazing artwork, animation and sound design, and I love the messasge at the end - nice to play something at your own pace and it contrasts nicely with so many other games where you're racing against the clock.  Great job!

Really fun!  Such a simple idea but well executed and gets difficulty very quickly, which I liked.  I love how each object makes a different sound when knocked over, that was a nice touch. 

This was really fun!  Great idea for the theme and it all works really well with the combo system and time multiplier.  Great job!   

Hilarious and very relatable - my cat was not happy with me during the final crunch before the jam deadline. 

The fly landing on the power button and the cat meow pitch minigame were my favourite.  This is such a ridiculous idea for a game but I'd love to see more! 

...you could say it's a hands up display! 

Movement feels great once you get going - took me a while to figure out wallrunning but it was really fun jumping around and the swinging felt nice and fluid too.  I like that your HP is how many fingers you have left, that's a neat way to it without relying on a hud. 

Also really love the art style and overall aesthetic! 

Thank you for playing and for the very kind words!  :D 

Also, a pretty impressive score right there! 

Thank you for playing and for the feedback! 

I originally had a system that looked at every word individually and my goal was to rate each sentence using a percentage of what you got right and then an overall score based on that, but I ran out of time to implement it properly so it just ended up being sentence by sentence.  

Sombre but cosy!  I liked the concept of making deliveries before the world ends.  Driving feels nice and responsive and the procedural world generation is well implemented.  Being able to change radio stations was a nice touch too.

As someone who loves pixel art this is a lot of fun.  I love the 8x8 renditions of famous paintings.  Took me a while to realise you could mix colours straight on the canvas though - I spent an embarrassingly long time to figure that out...! 

Really fun concept for the theme.  Movement felt really good and it was fun to whip around trying to quickly shoot the targets without missing a single a shot or hitting a civilian.  

I would have liked a scoring system and maybe a combo that builds up until you miss a shot.  I could see speedrunners going absolutely crazy trying to get a high score in this :D 

Thank you for playing and glad to hear it made you laugh out loud :D 

I love the idea of a little bonus reward if you're able to make the reporter say something else - I could add a task failed successfully bonus or something! 

And I absolutely loved Picture Day!  It's so hard to find these hidden gems when there are so many entries!! 

Absolutely hilarious!  Such a weird concept for a game but I loved every second of it.  The photobook at the end was such a good idea to see all your failures.  The music and art style are perfect.  

Great job getting everything so polished.  I definitely need to try with a controller next!

Aah thank you so much :D